A BOOTLEGGER who was whipped and spent years in jail after making millions from Saudi moonshine has revealed the secrets of his double life.
Gordon Malloch worked by day as a chef in the Gulf but by night he was arranging massive illegal shipments of whisky into the alcohol-free Islamic state.
The black market booze was drunk in secret desert parties arranged for expats.
But his empire ended when Gordon found himself hanging from a tree, being tortured with electric shocks and sentenced to 480 lashes.
But as Perthshire-born Gordon gets ready to have his story told on television, he told the Sunday Mail that, despite being tortured, beaten and jailed for years, he wouldn’t change a thing about his time in Saudi Arabia.
For six years, Gordon, 58, hid whisky and gin inside fake generators and even had an industrial-grade still stashed at home.
He was the go-to man for booze in the alcohol-free state – until he was grassed up by a royal aide.
Sentenced to more than three years in jail and 480 lashes, he was shocked to be shipped off to a filth-covered prison for his crimes until the British embassy secured his release 17 months later.
The Scot tells his story for the first time this week on the National Geographic Channel.
He said: “It took me about three weeks of living in Saudi Arabia to get started. I was a real entrepreneur because there wasn’t any taste and quality before I arrived.
“I was nearly six years doing it and the reason I lasted so long is there was a lot of fake whisky and gin coming from Bulgaria, the kind people would go blind from. I never touched that, I always stayed with the genuine article.
“We held parties in the desert reached by motorbike, there was nothing we couldn’t do, it was synonymous with the feel of the 80s.
“I have never had any regrets. I’m very nostalgic for those days –I made and spent two fortunes. You never think about what might happen because you never think they could catch you.”
Gordon moved to Saudi in 1978 from Aviemore. He took a job in Riyadh running a catering operation, and realised he was in the ideal position.
Other expats either imported or brewed their own hooch, so he started making homemade wine.
As he got better at it, he made more and more for sale, and he realised that his job as a catering boss meant he could get ingredients without alerting suspicion. He was soon making hundreds of litres a week, charging £50 per container, making huge amounts of cash.
He also ran a £5000 still he kept in a secret room behind a fake wall in his villa.
The money afforded him lavish holidays and on one such break to Bahrain, he hooked up with some businessmen who were looking to bring named brands into Saudi.
He said: “These guys had the capital to buy up 400 to 600 cases at a time and I had the idea of bringing it into the country in generators. I was shipping out a quarter of a million dollars at a time.”
The profits meant he bought a 1977 Ferrari to keep back home in Scotland, while he was living the life of a prince in Riyadh.
Fearing he was pushing his luck, he made an exit plan – but as he was preparing his last delivery, he was sold out by a customer’s aide.
The cops, who thought if he was smuggling booze he could also be smuggling guns, tortured him.
He said: “I was in a holding cell for two days and they tied me up in a tree. They hit my feet. They cattle prodded me. I was wearing shackles on my feet stamped, ‘Made in Birmingham’.
“After a couple of days I got my sentence on a piece of paper. Now don’t get me wrong, I was guilty but I expected to stand up in court and accept a sentence, not to find out I had just been fined 120 grand, given three-and-a-half years and 480 lashes.
“It took a while to sink in. The prison was terrible. It stank to high heaven.”
After 17 months of political wrangling, Gordon was offered freedom.
He said: “I was transferred to Kilo 19, a holding facility. It was hell on earth. You had to walk through excrement to take a pee and there were maggots up the toilet wall.
“All I remember is boarding a BA flight to London, first class. I asked the stewardess for some hand cream, a glass of port and some Stilton. I was going home.”
?Banged Up Abroad – The Saudi Bootlegger, is on National Geographic Channel on Tuesday, at 9pm.
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