Crime must not be seen to pay.

LIKE all the best jokes, there is just a grain of truth in the old saying that, in Liverpool, crime is a career option. Certainly many who saw Curtis Warren's rise to the ranks of the Sunday Times Rich List, from his roots in Toxteth, must have contemplated, however fleetingly, following in his footsteps.

Now he has been convicted of his part in a drugs plot, he faces a spell in jail of anything up to the maximum the law allows, in this case 14 years.

With any luck, this will be a sufficient deterrent to those who would wish to follow in his footsteps. There is a false glamour about the life of a big-time criminal, and the outcome of the trial in Jersey will, we hope, drive that message home.

Certainly, there will be few tears shed for Curtis Warren and his associates. For once, the phrase "drugs baron" seems particularly apt - although "robber baron" may be even more appropriate.

But, if we are to lay the Warren empire to rest, there has to be one of the most thorough pursuits yet of a criminal's assets.

When these run into tens of millions of pounds, as has been claimed, they can be hidden right across the world. Chances are that many people may be working perfectly innocently for an organisation ultimately funded by the proceeds of crime.

Yet these assets still need to be tracked down and, where they involve perfectly innocent people, taken over and run as proper and legitimate businesses.

It could be a long job involving a team of forensic investigators with, we hope, sufficient powers to follow their quarry to the bitter end.

Only then will it be possible to establish the truth of another of those sometimes over-familiar remarks: Crime does not pay.

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