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The claims come from a “businessman” who suggests in a newly released recording that he helped Noye, now 75, after he fled the UK on a plane owned by late criminal John Palmer. The source says he had no idea Noye was a wanted murderer. He was on the run after he stabbed the 21-year-old on a slip road of the M25 near Swanley, Kent, on May 19, 1996.

Noye was later extradited from Spain, convicted of murder and jailed for life in 2000. He was released on licence in 2019.

Mr Cameron’s killing was in the same year Noye, a former freemason, was released from a 14-year prison sentence for handling 11 gold bars stolen during the infamous Brink’s-Mat gold bullion robbery in 1983.

Palmer, shot dead in his Essex garden in June 2015, was cleared of smelting down Brink’s-Mat gold in 1987, but jailed for eight years in 2001 for a timeshare fraud on Tenerife. No one has been convicted of his murder.

Accountant Paul Blanchard, 77, an offshore adviser to associates of Palmer on the Spanish island, said the 2001 recording was an interview with the businessman for a planned memoir.

In the recording, the man said: “Kenny Noye was sometimes round the swimming pool and in the evening he would meet John Palmer to go for dinner, all the time, this was normal. If he needed anything he’d ring me.”

He said Noye even risked flying back to the UK on Palmer’s private jet before returning to live it up on his yacht with a girlfriend.

The man was interviewed by TV producer David Taylor, of Glasshouse Media, who wrote the memoir that was provided to the businessman, but has never been published. The businessman said: “Kenny Noye liked me a lot and he respects me and sees me as a man for business. All the time we go out to eat at restaurants.”

He said when he agreed to help Noye, he did not know that he was on the run for murder.

He added: “I was involved because John Palmer told me to be involved.”

Mr Taylor said: “I have not been involved in the release of the recording, but can confirm I am interviewing him and that is what he said to me. I still have a copy of the recording.”

Contacted by the Sunday Express, the businessman said: “I was only involved for a day or two when Kenny Noye arrived and I did not know what he had done. If I did know, I would never have helped a murderer. I would have done the right thing.”

The recording and several others, which include taped calls of his time as an informant, were lost by Mr Blanchard for years during a legal battle with the Spanish authorities.

He had acted as their informant before they accused him of money laundering for timeshare fraud and tried to extradite him.

The tapes turned up at a former solicitor’s office and were used as evidence in the extradition battle, which Mr Blanchard won in 2021.

It comes as a BBC drama The Gold, starring Hugh Bonneville, about the fallout of the Brink’s-Mat robbery, begins next Sunday.

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