The canoeist who came back from the dead is believed to have used false documents to travel across the world, police sources have said.

John Darwin is thought to have obtained a false passport or used someone else’s documentation to travel after his official “death” by drowning in 2002. He also appeared to have applied for credit cards and bank accounts under his real name.

Cleveland police were said last night to be in consultation with their counterparts in Panama City about the documentation.

Officials at the Panama National Migration Department told local television stations last night that they had a record of Mrs Darwin entering the country three times on a tourist visa. An official added, however, that there was no record of a John Darwin ever entering the country.

Mr Darwin’s last legal passport is believed to have expired in 2003. Reports from Central America claim that he used his wife’s maiden name of Stephenson on at least one passport.

The former prison officer, who disappeared for five years before resurfacing last weekend, is believed to have travelled across Europe and the US.

Detectives are also trying to determine whether he used credit cards on his travels. A credit card application in the name of John Darwin was sent in 2006 to a house he once owned jointly with his wife, Anne.

Police revealed on Wednesday that they had begun to investigate large cash transfers connecting the Darwins to Panama three months ago. Suspicions were first raised after a tip-off from a friend of Mrs Darwin who overheard her talking on the phone in an agitated manner and suspected that Mr Darwin was alive.

Jack Straw, the Justice Secretary, said that the Government was looking into why the Coroner’s Office issued the death certificate after admitting that its staff had suspicions about Mr Darwin’s disappearance. He was declared dead in 2003, 13 months after he vanished in an apparent canoeing accident. The decision enabled Mrs Darwin to collect a series of payments without having to wait seven years — the normal length of time necessary for someone to be declared dead in the absence of a body.

Mr Darwin maintains that he does not remember anything since 2000. Medical experts will conduct a series of tests which may include a scan to test for brain damage.

Mr Darwin may be the latest in a long line of men who disappeared and then used improper documentation.

John Stonehouse, the former Labour MP, left his clothes on a Miami Beach in 1974 to create the impression that he had drowned while swimming. He was found carrying a false passport in Melbourne, Australia.

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