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 today 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.
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