Two men who provided money laundering services worth tens of millions of pounds to organised crime groups have been jailed for a total of more than 12 years.
Tarik Meghrabi and Amin Sabir ran a central London money service bureau (MSB), which dealt with more than £35m of criminal proceeds before the pair were arrested in November 2009.
SOCA’s financial investigation found much of the money was derived from identity theft and tax swindles. One client of Sabir, Nasir ‘Nasa’ Khan, was convicted of VAT fraud in December 2011 following an HM Revenue and Customs investigation.
The profits generated by providing a financial laundry to organised crime groups allowed the pair to live extravagantly, with Meghrabi purchasing a £4.5m house in Chelsea in addition to other London properties.
Meghrabi had set up an MSB, then called Euro FX Ltd, following his father Ziad’s arrest for money laundering in 2005. Amin Sabir joined him when the MSB moved to premises on London’s Edgware Road, and they began trading jointly as CC Exchange and Bean Exchange.
The proceeds of funds stolen from victims’ bank accounts by criminal organisations were processed through Bean Exchange. Such transactions included the £330,000 life savings of one individual. The pair produced false invoices in an attempt to make the scale of trade in Euros appear legitimate, but otherwise kept minimal business records.
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