WIREDGOV

Convicted money launderer, Raj Koli, has been sentenced to 6 years and 9 months for failure to pay his £1.6 million confiscation order.

Koli (DOB - 27/02/1976) was originally arrested in October 2007 following the handover of more than £400,000 cash linked to an organised crime group in South London. In April 2009 he was sentenced to 5 years, later reduced to 3.5 years on appeal.

A confiscation order for £1.6m was made against Koli in January 2011. He was given 6 months to pay with a default sentence set at 7 years imprisonment. Koli was also made subject to both a Serious Crime Prevention Order (SCPO) and a Financial Reporting Order (FRO), to run for five years, however it quickly became apparent that he was failing to comply with even the most basic reporting requirements. He was recalled to prison and in 2012 convicted of breaching his SCPO. He was sentenced to a further 24 months reduced to 12 on appeal.

In April 2014 Koli was convicted of breach of his Financial Reporting Order and received a suspended sentence plus a 2 month curfew with electronic tagging. Then in May 2016 he was convicted of a further 2 breaches of his SCPO for which he was sentenced to 12 months and 6 months to run consecutively.

During all this time, Koli had only paid £83,692.38p towards his £1.6million confiscation order, leaving £1,516,307.62p plus £732,463.92 interest outstanding. On the 13 June 2017, Westminster Magistrates Court refused Raj Koli’s application against his default sentence and imposed a term of 2463 days to be served.

Phil Aiken of the NCA’s Economic Crime Command, said: “Confiscation orders are a powerful weapon to deny access to the profits of crime, and failure to pay attracts a hefty penalty. Raj Koli still owes this money, now more than £2.2m, and we will be using the tools at our disposal to identify any assets he has to enforce payment.”