So, constable, what gave you away as brothel boss – was it the £178k Ferrari?
a POLICeMaN who secretly ran brothels that made more than £1million was caught after he turned up for work in a Ferrari.
PC Osman Iqbal, 37, was based at a suburban police station where he was part of 999 call response team.
Colleagues raised suspicions when Iqbal arrived for work driving the £178,000 red Ferrari 458. anti-corruption police at his own force then began investigating his bank accounts.
The West Midlands Police officer was eventually jailed for seven years and two months after a court heard he had been controlling multi-million pound brothels in the West end of London.
he is now awaiting a further sentencing hearing after he admitted three unrelated counts of misconduct in a public office, over abortive attempts to access police computer systems on behalf of a friend.
a court heard that Iqbal and his three cousins took control of the brothels, where cocaine was sold to punters for £100 a gram. Many clients were offered drugs and women by taxi drivers who picked them up outside West end nightclubs. The driv-
‘Punters stayed for days on end’
ers were paid £150 for each customer they delivered to the brothels.
Once there, the customers would be charged up to £300-an-hour per girl. some customers ran up bills totalling thousands of pounds and stayed there ‘for days on end’, Warwick Crown Court heard.
One brothel was yards from the exclusive Bond street shopping district and the savile Club, while the other was in the heart of soho. The businesses made more than £1million, the court heard.
Records of card payments during the period of the conspiracy totalled £820,000, while there was also an unquantifiable amount of large cash payments. Iqbal and his cousins, brothers Talib, atif and asri hussain, each admitted conspiring to act or assist in the management of a brothel and possessing cocaine with intent to supply.
all except asri hussain also admitted conspiracy to launder the proceeds. as well as being jailed in september, Iqbal, who was based at King’s heath police station in Birmingham, has been sacked.
his cousins – all from Birmingham – received sentences ranging from three to eight years.
During the investigation, anti- corruption officers also discovered that Iqbal had attempted to access force intelligence systems.
Last month he pleaded guilty to three counts of misconduct in a public office. Nahiem ajmal, 35, a religious leader, from hodge hill, and sajad Khan, 35, from hockley, both in Birmingham, were found guilty of the same offence this week. all three will be sentenced next month.