The full extent of media mogul Robert Maxwell 's paranoia in the months leading up to his death has been laid bare in secretly recorded phone calls between his executives.
The disgraced Mirror owner, who had worked for the KGB and MI6, bugged the offices of his global media empire and his lavish home in Oxfordshire.
In the audio recordings, revealed in a TV documentary, his senior staff are frustrated at being unable to contact Maxwell for three days while he was sailing off the Canary Islands.
One key executives says: "I'm f***ed if I know what he’'s done. He's gone away on his boat - and he said to me he was going to talk to them. And I'm still trying to track this bloody money down."
Another is heard saying: "It's going to blow up and head in the sand isn't going to help. F***'s sake."
For months, senior Mirror Group employees had secretly suspected there were holes in the company's finances, including in staff's pension fund.
In November 1991 their boss's body was found floating in the Atlantic ocean.
Soon after his death, it was discovered he had stolen £440million from the pension fund to inflate the company's share price.
His global media empire was found to be around £2billion in debt.
The BBC2 series also contains previously unseen footage of Maxwell hours before his death standing on the deck of superyacht Lady Ghislaine, named after his favourite daughter.
The footage also shows 22-stone Maxwell naked in the sea with the ship's buoyancy ring around his torso.
After his death, senior staff struggle to make sense of his finances.
One tells another they have discovered they are "short" by £6.8m. "On top of the 100 bloody million? This is only the tip of the iceberg," comes the incredulous response.
In exchanges voiced by actors to protect identities, one exec says: "Where the hell has all the money gone?"
He is assured that a "big chunk" is on the way back. The man replies: "If it doesn’t, there’s going to be the most God almighty public scandal." Another staff member concludes: "We're f***ed."
Former Mirror Group secretary Carol Bragoli said towards the end of his life Maxwell only trusted sons Kevin and Ian, who worked alongside him. She added: "He was becoming very suspicious. It reflects how paranoid he was becoming."
The Maxwell brothers were later arrested on suspicion of fraud but were both acquitted at trial.
Executive producer Colin Barr said despite the extensive research for the three films, it is still unknown if Maxwell killed himself or fell in by accident. He does not think it was murder.
He told Radio Times: "We have footage from the yacht that week where he looks relaxed, but who knows? He had a bottomless capacity for convincing himself his own lies were true and by then was extremely paranoid, ever more isolated as the financial noose tightened.
"Maxwell could have been a heroic figure, coming from poverty to succeed in a country as class-ridden as Britain. Instead his path curdled into hubris, vanity and moral corruption, which was then passed down the line to his family, including Ghislaine. It's hard to imagine a more dramatic rise or disastrous fall.”
The series also deals with Ghislaine's friendship with billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In December she was convicted of sex trafficking.
House of Maxwell starts Monday on BBC Two at 9pm.
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