Shaun Smith is a former Liverpool gang member who, after spending five years in prison for firearms offences, has completely turned his life around in the years since his release in 2011. They were found guilty of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice and jailed for life.Although disputes of this type were hardly new, the gang decided to use unprecedented tactics. Downes and Bradley were later jailed for life.The Haase name provided the clients with a degree of reassurance and his contacts across the city held the potential to make problems go away.Tony Downes and Kirk Bradley became poster boys for a new generation of renegade criminals who would commit acts of violence for cash.The following year Merseyside Police targeted Haase, raiding his headquarters at Stanley Dock in north Liverpool. The Merseyside men, one from Liverpool and one from Wirral, were later released.Pressure was put on his associates - a grenade, it was said, would be thrown into a restaurant linked to him. One would have gone into the family home had children not been present.That sum, he believed, may help him keep the Colombians at bay. He is reported have suffered brain damage.So at the time the Turkish gangster had his heroin shipment busted, he was already reeling from the loss of his cocaine.There are strong reports, not yet confirmed, that a powerful Irish drug gang was behind the attempted hit.It was there where the now infamous Cafe De Ketel operated as a meeting spot for some of the world's most powerful drugs gangs.The Merseyside presence in Amsterdam may now be more focused on supporting other criminal factions - particularly Irish - than the 1990s and following decade, when major Liverpool gangsters were leading lights on the frontline of the criminality over there.The National Crime Agency wants to question him about a large-scale conspiracy to import cocaine from Europe into the UK.The year before, two Merseyside men were held by police after a man was threatened with a gun in a bar in the Dutch city's Rembrandtplein square.But The Maniac was not aware that police were watching his meeting with the father-in-law.High profile incidents over the past 18 months show that, while they may not as powerful as they once were, Merseyside gangsters remain active at the highest levels of international criminalityThis was a senior level European criminal - his connections so significant he could organise two £60m drugs shipments from two separate continents - turning to a man with “an accent from Liverpool" when his life was in danger.After travelling through Antwerp the cargo was followed to Rotterdam and two men were captured by Dutch police as they searched for the substances - most of which had been removed by the authorities.Later the same day he was pulled over by police, who discovered what amounted to a kidnappers' toolkit in the Skoda Octavia he was riding in.The cargo was thought to have been sent from Iran - often used as a transit route by drug traffickers looking to move heroin produced in neighbouring Afghanistan to other parts of the world.In The Netherlands, a melting pot of criminal factions where many of the most terrifying gangs in the world have representatives, he turned to The Maniac.Customs officers discovered 58kg of the Class A drug when they searched a container on a ship as it travelled through Rotterdam.That heroin and morphine consignment had been ordered from Iran, where the drugs had been hidden among ovens.But, in what appears to have been an outrageous scam by a rival gang, the cocaine had been unloaded before reaching the Turkish gangster's footsoldiers.The man, known as "that crazy Englishman", then embarked on an extortion plot that saw him surround the Rotterdam home of the father-in-law of his target.While inside two things happened.Now able to tap into his conversations, Dutch investigators found out the same underworld figure had a stake in a 1,300kg cocaine shipment hidden in bananas that had arrived from Colombia the month before.There is a suggestion in the court documents that half of the cocaine shipment linked to the Turkish drugs boss may have been destined for Merseyside.He had travelled to Rotterdam and met international drug traffickers to plan the movement of drugs from Latin America to the EU.An Irish criminal said to be a member of the notorious 'Kinahan cartel' was later jailed for six months for his part in the incident.