The ordeal of Mr Dines Snr and his three colleagues began when officers from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca) arrived at their homes early one February morning in 2010, armed with EAWs issued by Italian magistrates investigating a £344 million money laundering operation, allegedly masterminded by the Mafia.
At the same time all their assets were frozen and restraining orders placed on their homes, worth a total of £25 million, preventing their sale. In January last year Westminster magistrates ruled the men should be extradited after hearing that they were accused by Judge Aldo Morgigni, the Italian investigating magistrate, of being part of a “transnational criminal organisation consisting of more than 10 people” and “complicit in money laundering”.
The offences detailed in the EAWs arose out of an investigation by Judge Morgigni into the financial activities of two Italian telecom companies, Telecom Media Sparkle and Fastweb, which has seen the arrests of around 50 suspects.
It is alleged that both firms engaged in “carousel VAT fraud” in Italy, and that the London-based commodity brokerage and telecoms firms companies run by the four men “acted as fictitious clients so that money generated by the fraud was laundered through the companies’ accounts”.
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