£104m launderers
Gang flew cocaine cash to the Gulf in suitcases
THE mastermind of Britain’s biggest money laundering racket was sent to prison yesterday.
Abdullah Mohammed Ali Bin Beyat Alfalasi ran a network that smuggled £104million of drugs cash abroad.
The 47-year- old from the United Arab Emirates claimed to be a successful businessman with global connections.
In reality he controlled 36 couriers who used suitcases to fly up to £500,000 at a time out of Heathrow to destinations including Dubai.
On arrival in the UAE they declared the cash to immigration staff with no questions asked. It was then exchanged into dirhams and used to buy cryptocurrency online and gold bars from Africa.
The National Crime Agency believes Alfalasi’s network transported vast sums around the globe, investing in different commodities to disguise colossal profits from street cocaine deals in the UK.
Wads of banknotes were vacuum packed and put in suitcases weighing more than six stone. The cases were sprayed with coffee and air fresheners to put off sniffer dogs.
Alfalasi, who had a £4million home in Belgravia, central London, paid his mules up to £8,000 per trip and put them in business class for the extra baggage allowance.
The ring was broken when a courier, Kim Kardashian lookalike Tara Hanlon, 31, was caught taking nearly £2million to Dubai in October 2020.
Alfalasi, who had carried £6million himself, admitted removing criminal cash from the UK in 2019 and 2020. The father of six was jailed for nine years and seven months at Isleworth Crown Court.
Ian Truby of the NCA said: ‘This money laundering network smuggled astronomical sums of money.
‘This is the largest we have ever investigated.’
Hanlon, a recruitment consultant from Leeds, admitted smuggling cash and was jailed for 34 months last July.