He trained as a plumber after leaving school and completed a City and Guilds course in the trade before going on to become an inspector for Sunderland and South Shields Water Company.

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Since the age of 19, he has been making a profit from property development.

Jones has two teenage children and a wife, a dental practice manager.

In 1992, he joined Northumbria Police and was first based at Houghton.

He rose through the ranks, becoming a detective in the late 1990s.

During his police career, he was involved in many high-profile inquiries, including the murder of nine-year-old Laura Kane, of Penshaw.

Jones was arrested in June 2007 as he drove along Seaham seafront in his Land Rover Discovery.

During the nine-week trial, he said he found it "embarrassing" to talk about his trip to London with Foster and admitted he had made a big mistake in becoming friends with him.

Even after Foster was named by the David 'Noddy' Rice murder investigation team as its No 1 suspect, Jones failed to mention the extent of his friendship with the criminal, by then a fugitive.

He did not pass on telephone numbers, addresses and information he had about Foster which could have been crucial to the probe.

Jones retired from the force after he was charged with misconduct, and, after a brief spell back in plumbing, he took a job as a lecturer at Newcastle College.

THE DRUGS BOSS: Allan Foster started his criminal career as a teenager when he joined the notorious Boss (Boys of South Shields) gang.

The Boss criminal network was involved in drugs distribution and savage violence in the 1990s on Tyneside.

During his time with the gang, Foster was given an 11-year jail sentence for conspiring to cause grievous bodily harm and supply of Class A drugs.

The 32-year-old, formerly of South Shields, had only been out of jail, after serving that sentence, for less than a year when he became involved in importing £1m worth of cocaine into the UK in 2001.

A quarter of a ton of the then-Class B drug had been imported from Belgium, and Foster was caught unloading the haul at a port in Ipswich, Suffolk.

In 2004, he was given a three-year sentence for the cannabis importation.

Foster was renting a plush detached property he shared with girlfriend Shareena McAuley, as well as a river-front apartment in Sunderland and a mews house in Kensington, London.

In April 2006, his Sunderland home was raided by police investigating the theft of a diamond ring.