Police hunt loan sharks riding Britain’s rising tide of debt

LEICESTER: Armed police shin up ladders to scale an imposing security fence and rush past palm trees to raid a sprawling mockTudor property in search of evidence.

The household in this English midlands city is clearly a prosperous one. Police suspect this is the home of the boss of a illegal moneylending operation, surfing on Britain’s rising tide of debt and wrecking countless lives.

The target was neither at home at the time of the morning swoop, nor at the suspect’s ostensible business, a local garage, which was raided at the same time.

Police said their search would continue.

The operation yesterday was the latest by the England Illegal Money Lending Team (IMLT), a Birmingham-based unit tasked with cracking down on loan sharks lending cash to vulnerable borrowers.

“The debt is unenforceable in law, so the ways they make people pay can be extreme,” said Tony Quigley, head of the team.

“We have seen kidnapping, psychological intimidation, wounding and in one case, rape.

“People can be unwilling to come forward because they are frightened and there is a stigma attached. But we need people to be brave and come forward. If you’re in the clutches of a loan shark, ring us and we will deal with it.”

Blue-gloved police involved in yesterday’s raids seized documents, electronic devices and a large quantity of cash and jewellery that could prove the suspect’s links to a loan-shark operation.

The size of Britain’s “belowthe-radar” illegal loan business is hard to assess but police believe it is worth around 750 million pounds (RM3.9 billion) a year, Quigley said.