A firm of London solicitors that set up an offshore company for the daughters of
Azerbaijan’s president has been referred to a disciplinary tribunal after
being accused of multiple failings. They include not detecting “a significant
risk of money-laundering”. Leyla and Arzu Aliyeva – the daughters of President Ilham Aliyev – set up a secret offshore company to help
manage their multimillion-pound property portfolio in Britain. The firm,
Exaltation Limited, was based in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands. Details of the offshore company emerged in April 2016 as part of a leak of
records from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, known as the Panama Papers. The London law firm that set up Exaltation, Child
& Child, claimed – wrongly – that the two women had no political
connections. The business interests and property portfolios of the Aliyev
family have been the subject of extensive reporting, amid allegations of
massive corruption. Read More ...
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Cocaine
can be delivered quicker than a pizza across Britain with over a third of users
able to get the drug within half an hour, survey reveals
- 37%
of cocaine users in England and Scotland say they can get the drug
delivered within half an hour
- This
compares with 12% in England and 20% in Scotland who can get a pizza
delivered in the same time
- Worldwide
30.3% of 15,000 cocaine users questioned can get their hands on drug
within half an hour
- This
is compared with 16.5% who can get a pizza delivered in that time,
according to Global Drug Survey. Read More ...
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Rukhsa
r Bashier, 44, was told 'crime doesn't pay' by a judge as he was
given a proceeds of crime order at Teesside Crown Court. A former drugs gang ‘paymaster’ has been ordered to pay almost £2m more to
the state as a judge told him: “Crime doesn’t pay.”
Businessman Rukhsar Bashier, 44, was jailed almost 10 years ago as one of
the top men in a plot to set up cannabis factories in Middlesbrough
.In 2009, a judge ruled he and three others made more than £5.7m from crime,
including £2,799,525 for Bashier alone. He was ordered to pay £300,000 - the amount he then had available, a
fraction of his gains - after receiving an 11-year prison sentence.Now, almost a decade later, Bashier was back at Teesside Crown Court
under the same legislation to seize criminals’ assets. Read More ...
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Calls grow for the UK to shake off its
reputation as a haven for suspect cash as tensions with Russia rise. One
evening in early March, a former Russian double agent and his daughter, visiting
from Moscow, were found unresponsive on a park bench beside a nondescript
shopping arcade in the soporific English town of Salisbury. In an attack that
evoked memories of the murder of the dissident Alexander Litvinenko in London
in 2006, Sergei and Yulia Skripal were poisoned with a nerve agent apparently
traced to Russia. Within hours, the frost was forming yet again on relations
between the UK and the Kremlin. Diplomatic expulsions followed, but politicians
and anti-corruption campaigners in the UK lined up to demand more effective
action. The clamour grew to target the ultra-wealthy Russians who had long
flaunted their wealth in Britain and who allegedly relied on President Vladimir
Putin’s.. Read More ...
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A church leader who lied about charity donations to
fraudulently claim £155,840 in Gift Aid repayments has been jailed for four
years. Teslim Johnson, 39, from Dunstable, Bedfordshire, used his
position as a preacher and trustee at Agape Church in Luton, Bedfordshire, to
steal the funds. As a registered charity, the church could claim Gift Aid on
donations. But in 2016 HM Revenue & Customs officers contacted donors
listed on the charity’s records after they became suspicious of a series of
claims.They found that most of the donations had not
been made and many alleged donors had never heard of the church. Read More ...
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An
organised crime group was dismantled and 9 suspects arrested on 8 March in a major
operation in Europe and South America. Operation NANA was led by the Croatian
Police and the Rijeka State Prosecutor’s Office and jointly conducted by
Colombia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Panama, Slovenia, Spain, the Drug
Enforcement Administration of the United States (US DEA) and Europol. The crime
network was suspected of transporting multi-kilogram quantities of cocaine from
Colombia, Ecuador and Panama to Europe.
A
container ship legally carrying scrap metal from Panama to the port of Rijeka,
Croatia, was found to be transporting more than 100 kilograms of cocaine and
150 kilograms of marijuana destined for the Croatian illicit drugs market.
Investigators also concluded that part of the group was involved in tobacco
trafficking and in March 2017 seized more than 69 000 packets of cigarettes
worth EUR 350 000. Read More ...
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Four men
and a woman appeared in court today accused of laundering cash from the sale of
fake and unlicensed medicines after more than £19m passed through their
accounts.
Prosecutors
say counterfeit medication was bought in European countries such as Germany, Austria and France before being sold.
David
Cohen, 37, Mindy Gross, 42, and Jacob Gross, 44, Edward Cohen, 65, and Maurice
Gross, 37, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court facing a total of 14
charges against them.
David
Cohen, of Golders Green, north London, is charged with making a false
statement to obtain benefits, failing to notify of a change of circumstances
affecting benefits, providing false information to the Charity Commission,
acquiring criminal property and being concerned by the acquisition of criminal
property. Read More ...
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An
international money laundering ring hiding dirty cash for a former Manchester
City player turned suspected drug dealer was smashed by Merseyside Police . Ryan
McDowell and his cronies delivered piles of drugs cash stuffed into suitcases
and bin bags to other criminals – who used a technique known as ‘cuckoo
smurfing’ to make it disappear. Today McDowell, 33, of The Meadows, Rainhill , was jailed for five years
at Liverpool Crown Courtafter being observed
channelling at least £550,000 through the ‘professional’ network of money
launderers, and an additional £142,000 through his own bank accounts.Judge
Alan Conrad, QC, sentencing, told him: “Yours was the leading role of the
defendants before the court, in which you were directing operations and dealing
in considerable sums of cash – carrying on over a period of time undeterred by
stops or seizures. Read More ...
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Over the past decade or so, expats across the world have been warned time and time again
about crooks posing as financial advisors, but boiler room scammers are the
worst of the entire poisonous pack. Often operating from back-street rooms in the capital cities of many favourite
expat locations, unqualified, briefly-trained and often without legal visas,
these crooks are experts in just one thing – separating their victims from their hard-earned wages, capital and pensions.
Financially unsophisticated expatriates fall for their scripts and lose
everything on a regular basis, whilst the scammers shut up shop and move to
another location to avoid detection. Sadly, the majority get away with it, but occasionally the gang makes a mistake
and ends up in court.
Read More ...
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On
18 December 2017, the National Bureau of Investigations of the Slovenian
Police, supported by the Croatian Police and Europol, dismantled an
international crime syndicate involved in sports corruption and illegal
betting. The network had created an illegal web-platform in order to convey
large bets on major Asian bookmakers. In total, 13 house searches and 15
vehicles searches in different locations in Slovenia and Croatia have been
carried out. Read More ...
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A Russian man who ran a sophisticated computer hacking network which stole at least £2 million from the bank accounts of UK businesses has been jailed for nine years. Vugar Mollachiev, 37, of Berkeley Gardens, north London, was sentenced to nine years imprisonment at Southwark Crown Court for conspiracy to defraud and money laundering, the Metropolitan Police said.
Evidence from a previous cyber crime investigation identified Mollachiev as being heavily involved in cyber criminality and online fraud. Scotland yard said Mollachiev and his associates used their technical knowledge to infect computers in businesses across the UK and Europe, enabling them to defraud businesses and UK banks out of over £2 million.
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Dramatic CCTV footage has emerged showing the moment two money launderers were cornered
by police in an
Asda car park as they
exchanged a bag containing hundreds of thousands of pounds. Fen Chen,
31, was part of a gang that took £1.8million into dozens of
London High Street banks between July 30
and August 15 last year. In the
video, released by the National Crime Agency (NCA), the money launderer can be
seen accepting a bag containing more than £300,000 from Albanian gangster
Fation Koka in the car park in Park Royal, northwest London.
Read More... _______________________________________
