£17million underworld bankers in line for jail
TWO underworld bankers who laundered more than £17million in organised crime profits are facing jail.
Daniel Keenan, 41, and Andrew Barnett, 45, cleaned up vast proceeds from cocaine and heroin dealing by making currency exchanges with a stolen identity.
The pair were later linked to Ian Kiernan, who was jailed for 20 years in 2001 for a key role in one of Britain’s biggest ever drug smuggling plots.
Barnett was stopped in November 2009 near London’s Marble Arch carrying a satchel found to contain 535,000 Euros in 200 Euro notes.
He also had a receipt from a nearby money service bureau called Interchange.
Convicted blackmailer Keenan contacted the police station a few days later, claiming he had asked Barnett to carry out the transaction, and was promptly arrested on suspicion of money laundering.
Keenan, of Egham, Surrey, and Barnett, of Twickenham, Middx, admitted converting criminal property.
Keenan also admitted making fraud by false representation and having a fake passport.
They will be sentenced later this week. BRITAIN is facing a “perfect storm” fuel crisis after one of our biggest oil refineries went bust, tanker drivers walked out on strike…and rising tensions in the Middle East threatened to cut off 20% of our crude oil.
Forecourt bosses and MPS warned of parts of the country ‘grinding to a halt’ amid reports production had stopped at the Coryton oil refinery, which produces 10 per cent of the UK’S supplies.
Hundreds of jobs at Coryton, in Essex, are under threat after Swiss owner Petroplus said it would file for bankruptcy.
Petrol retailers warned Treasury minister Danny Alexander that there would be chaos at petrol stations if Coryton ceased production.
RMI Petrol chairman Brian Madderson said: “I told him the Government needed to be aware that the refinery was in a critical state. It’s amber alert. I asked him what were the contingency plans.”
Tankers
With reserves at “an all-time low” Mr Madderson said: “The country could grind to a halt.”
The AA urged motorists not to panic buy, which could drain petrol stations of their reserves and lead to queues on the forecourts.
Spokesman Luke Bosdet said: “The only problem comes when petrol stations run dry and people think it’s happening all over the place. That can put the supply out of sync.”
Fears petrol supplies could run out grew as tanker drivers went on strike at the South Killingholme refinery in Immingham, Lincolnshire.
South Killingholme supplies around 340 Jet filling stations.
The drivers are employed by delivery firm Wincanton and members of the giant Unite union.
A union spokesman at the Conoco- Phillips-jet Ocran Terminal at Immingham said: “No tankers have passed through the picket line and six or seven have turned back.”
The strike involves 123 tanker drivers at three Conoco-phillips sites in total: Immingham; the Kingsbury oil terminal in Warwickshire and a site in Stockton-on-tees in the North East.
But the trouble at home is as nothing compared to the potential storm brewing in the Middle East, where Iran is threatening to blockade the Straits of Hormuz – the world’s busiest highway for oil tankers.
Britain is standing by to send military back-up to the Straits to counter any Iranian attempt to close the waterway, which is the conduit for a FIFTH of the world’s crude oil supplies.
Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said that the UK has a “contingent capability” to reinforce the military presence it already has in the Persian Gulf “at any time it be considered necessary to do so”.
The Iranian threat to close the Straits came after the European Union implemented a range of sanctions against Tehran, including an oil embargo.
Angrily
Australia has now said that it, too, would join in the action.
The sanctions ratchet up the pressure on the Islamic Republic in the tense stand-off over its nuclear capabilities.
Iran says its nuclear programme is devoted to producing energy for peaceful purposes, but the West has long believed Tehran is trying to build a nuclear bomb.
Reports suggest that the country – led by fanatical president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – could be just six months away from having the atomic hardware to blow up the planet.
However, Iran has responded angrily to sanctions, with officials declaring its threat of closing the Strait “will definitely” be carried out.
British warship HMS Argyll, along with a French destroyer and giant Yank aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, entered the Gulf on Sunday in a show of strength as a warning to Tehran that they would not tolerate interference with global shipping.