PLP firebrand Alex Scott's claim of the United Bermuda Party being "unwittingly'' linked with organised crime may well have come from his own experience.

For Mr. Scott, a Progressive Labour Party MP in Warwick East -- was unwittingly linked with a man who was accused of laundering drug money and later found murdered in a French forest.

In 1987 Mr. Scott -- through his advertising and PR agency Scott Crafts -- met Leslie Chorlton, a British businessman who was interested in a number of ventures in Bermuda.

Mr. Scott subsequently visited Mr. Chorlton in Wales with lawyer Michael Scott -- now a PLP candidate in Southampton West -- for a series of meetings which included a number of visits to pubs and "a hair-rising drive in a Ferrari''.

He later said: "We were in promotions, and Leslie felt that any one of his projects might need the assistance of a PR firm.

"I think we were all somewhat leery of all his suggestions and when it came to the bottom line, there wasn't enough to substantiate things.

"It all didn't pan out and the offshoot was that we came back to Bermuda, and we never really heard of Leslie Chorlton again.'' Four years later, Mr. Chorlton turned up dead at the age of 47.

He was found bound and strangled with his Dutch wife Bernadette, 30, in a wooded area near their cottage in the Dordogne region of France.

The killing became the subject of a number of international police investigations and press reports. French police stated the couple were murdered by professional killers.

They said they suspected Mr. Chorlton was involved in laundering American drug money and was killed because he double-crossed a gang.

A French newspaper later reported the couple received a black glove in the post -- a threat often used by the US mafia.

And a French judge ordered a financial probe into Mr. Chorlton's affairs after complaints came from alleged US creditors.

In the British press, Mr. Chorlton was labelled a notorious con man.

Reports at the time said the man pulled off confidence tricks worth more than a million dollars and that he invented a number of false personae.

Scott's unwitting encounter One con allegedly saw him fraudulently amass a huge sum of money through an American firm called SBC Chorco by sending clients' money into share transactions which ended up in his own bank accounts.

And a newspaper report claimed Mr. Chorlton tried to negotiate a multi-million dollar deal with the mayor of the French town of Gramat. Apparently the mayor checked into his credentials and discovered his company in the US was just a mailing address and his bank references were false.

And Mr. Scott is not the only PLP representative to have been connected with Mr. Chorlton.

The businessman tried to set up a company in Bermuda through lawyer Julian Hall in the late 1980's. Mr. Hall sat as a PLP MP for Hamilton West between 1989 and 1993.

But the venture fell through when he could not provide a banker's reference.

Mr. Hall said the man never got past first base in his quest.

UNWITTING -- In the summer of 1991, the PLP's Alex Scott and Michael Scott told The Royal Gazette of their unwitting encounter with British con man Leslie Chorlton, who was later found murdered in a French forest. It is believed Chorlton and his wife were bumped-off by the American mafia.