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Police raids find three holdalls with £1m cash in one safe deposit box
Justin Davenport, Evening Standard3 Jun 2008
Police searching three London safe deposit box centres have discovered three holdalls containing up to £1 million in cash, it was revealed today.
The centres - in Park Lane, Hampstead and Edgware - are believed to contain millions of pounds worth of cash, drugs and guns banked by criminals. Armed police swooped on the centres yesterday and began searching up to 7,000 security boxes.
Today police revealed that they had uncovered the holdalls packed with £50 notes in a single safe deposit box at the Park Lane centre. One detective said: "We haven't started counting it yet but it looks like at least several hundred thousand, if not more."
At the Finchley site, police have begun opening the boxes with the help of staff and say they are uncovering an average of £50,000 to £70,000 worth of cash and jewellery in each box. Sniffer dogs have been brought in and have detected what is believed to be quantities of cash, drugs and guns in dozens of the boxes.
Estimates vary but it is believed that the security boxes could contain a total of more than a £1 billion in illegal booty. Many of the boxes will need to be removed and taken to another secure location to be drilled open by police.
Armed officers are patrolling the sites today in case a gang tries to mount a raid to recover their property.
The swoop by Scotland Yard's Specialist Crime Directorate is a massive blow to Britain's top-tier criminals. Gangsters are thought to have used the company Safe Deposit Centres Ltd to hide away millions of pounds.
Each of the boxes is being treated as a crime scene in its own right. Officers say it will take several days to search them all. Police believe they will provide links to almost every major criminal activity in Britain - ranging from shootings and drug trafficking to murder, fraud and paedophile gangs.
Two directors of the firm were arrested yesterday. They are Jacqueline Swann, 44 - who was held at the Mayfair address in Park Street, just off Park Lane, and Leslie Sieff, 60 - who was detained in Hampstead.
A third director, Milton Woolf, 52, is believed to have been abroad. Both men are originally from South Africa but have been residents in Britain since the Eighties.
Detectives began investigating the firm two years ago when it emerged that they may be leasing security boxes to gangsters. The inquiry is being run as a money-laundering operation but police believe it could spread much wider. There were also raids on the private homes of the three directors in London and Hertfordshire.
The Met's Assistant Commissioner John Yates said that intelligence from the two-year inquiry, codenamed Operation Rize, indicated that between 50 and 90 per cent of the boxes were connected to major British and international crime gangs, including drug and gun smugglers, fraudsters, people traffickers and paedophile and prostitution rings.
The size of the boxes ranged from small drawers to walk-in closets.
Mr Yates said police believed the company, which has been running for 20 years, was the only one in Britain that had failed to comply with the Proceeds Of Crime Act, which closed a legal loophole on safe deposit boxes. The 2002 law means that the company is supposed to check the identity of people renting boxes and report any suspicious activity.
Police say many innocent people will have been caught up in the operation and have issued a freephone number - 0800 030 4613 - for people to ring to claim back their property.
Speaking at Scotland Yard minutes after the raids began, Mr Yates said: "This operation is a huge undertaking to tackle the criminal networks who we believe are using safe deposit facilities to hide criminal assets."
Reader views (8)
This is indeed going before a High Court Judge & quite right too!
- James, London, 21/08/2008 11:44
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Most of you liberal complainers should listen to yourselves. All you want to do is pick on the Police when they do their job & when you've complained enough & made their job almost impossible to do, you complain when they don't do their job. Get out of your ivory towers, take off your rose coloured glasses & try getting involved in the solution instead of bitching about everything.
- Richard, London, England, 04/06/2008 12:47
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By the their own admission, the Police opened up to 50% of boxes that do not belong to alleged criminals, no different in principle to blurting into 50 homes with no justification. The 'justification' for the raid was that the owners of the company had broken the law, not the owners of the boxes and I can just imagine the questions they will be asked when they try and retrieve their goods. Possession being 9/10ths of the law takes on a whole new meaning.
- Larry, Amsterdam., 04/06/2008 11:05
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Switzerland, one of the most corrupt places! How many Nazi's stashed and still keep their ill gotten gains there. How many Jews lost out through their banking system?
- Paul Bradford, Monflanquin, France, 03/06/2008 17:55
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Why is the investigation automatically assuming that 90% of the depositors are criminal? What are the innocent people meant to do? Do they have to prove themselves innocent? Are they under investigation? How long will it take them to know that they can have their rightful property back? Have we lost our sense of justice? They are not to blame so why do they have to suffer any distress or even potential financial loss?
- G.D, UK, 03/06/2008 16:32
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The idea is to abolish all privacy so when the civil war starts with the Muslims, they can clamp despotic control over the whole population with ease.
- Tim Temple, Jacksonville, FL, 03/06/2008 14:15
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This country is becoming like a police state – they open all the safety deposit boxes because some of them have links to criminal activities – unbelievable.
Switzerland where they might be expansive but at least they understand the meaning of discretion and privacy is becoming more and more attractive as a new home...I really cannot believe this is thing is now acceptable
- Adam Fawsitt, London, UK, 03/06/2008 13:41
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Do not despair all you arms dealers, drug dealers, credit card fraudsters and the like. One of our esteemed high court judges will ride to your rescue. Either the search warrants will have a comma in the wrong place or one or more of your "human rights" to rob, plunder, terrorise, steal or demand will have been breached. The police and the government will be lambasted and you will get back your ill gotten gains.
- Trevor, Southend, 03/06/2008 12:28
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