WIREDGOV

Three members of a UK criminal network - which laundered at least £180m of cash for drug traffickers - face prison after the latest in a series of major trials concluded at Birmingham Crown Court. 

Ali Usman, Aqeel Yousaf and Naiz Ali join 29 accomplices previously convicted of enabling the international transfer of money acquired through organised crime.

Sentences already handed down total more than 140 years, and include eleven years for Muhammad Younas, who ran Mian International Ltd, a Manchester money service business (MSB). Its company bank accounts processed in excess of £160m between September 2008 and March 2011, all of which was directed into US dollar accounts before being transferred to Asia and the Middle East.

The laundering operation involved the collection of criminal cash from organised crime groups by a network of couriers controlled by Jamshid Haidary in the north of England and Nagibullah Mohammad in the midlands and south. Those exchanges would be arranged using coded text messages.

When in the control of the laundering operation, the cash – which might be English, Scottish or Northern Ireland bank notes - would be taken for counting and bagging at the home of Mohammad Khan Khoshalkhil in Birmingham, or premises in Leicester run by Jasvir Singh Sandar.

Using ‘quick drop’ cash bags which had a unique identification number, the money would then be taken to banks in Birmingham or Manchester and deposited into Mian’s accounts.

Younas and other members of the criminal network created false records in a bid to account for those money flows. Receipts totalling £72 million were faked in an attempt to justify the sums being credited to Mian International Ltd’s accounts.

For a single date in 2009, Noble (UK) Ltd, another Manchester MSB linked to the conspiracy, had invented records of 422 dealings totalling more than £228,000, all of which were shown to be just under the £600 threshold at which MSBs must ask for identification from customers. 

A further method of money laundering used by members of the crime group has become known as “cuckoo smurfing”.

This involved the payment of criminal cash into the bank accounts of unwitting recipients, typically students from Iran who were expecting transfers from home into their UK accounts.  They instead found that money was being paid into their accounts from seemingly random locations in the UK. Investigators believe that replacing legitimate money with criminal cash in this way made other, ‘clean’, money available to overseas organised criminals.

Ali Usman, Aqeel Yousaf and Naiz Ali were involved in more than £500,000 of laundering using this method.

The network was dismantled by a series of arrests, as well as cash seizures by investigators totalling £2.6 million.

Courier Ajmal Mohsen was in possession of £240,000 in a holdall when officers stopped him in 2010, and Larry Foster, who represented a drug trafficking group, was arrested with nearly £140,000 in cash in his van immediately prior to a planned meeting with Haidary in an industrial side street in Birmingham.

Officers additionally analysed phone data to ascertain that members of the laundering network were in contact with each other when they were transporting and banking the criminal money.

The NCA's Simon Flowers said:

“This investigation has successfully targeted and dismantled one of the most significant money laundering networks seen in the UK. Criminality like this is the nuts and bolts of organised crime, as the perpetrators can neither do business nor hope to evade detection without making illicit cash flows appear legitimate.

“The NCA is using its international reach and partnerships across law enforcement and many other sectors in the UK to identify criminal groups, stop them doing business, and bring their members to justice.”

On 9 April 2014, the NCA was granted a Confiscation Order of £930,000 against Nagibullah Mohammad, which he has 6 months to pay. Failure to do so will result in an addition four year and nine month prison sentence, after which he would still be liable for the money.

The investigation was supported by Greater Manchester Police, Central Motorway Patrol Group, West Midlands Police and law enforcement bodies in the Netherlands, Germany, Australia and the UAE.

Ali Usman, Aqeel Yousaf, and Naiz Ali will be sentenced at a later date.