British Raid on Deposit Boxes Reveals Trove of Criminal Treasure

| No Comments | No TrackBacks

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,510355,00.html

A British police raid on safe deposit boxes has revealed an "Aladdin's cave of criminality" that spans murder, money laundering, pedophilia, people trafficking and drug running. The findings have led to 1,000 inquiries around the world.

More than 3,500 boxes were raided by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Specialist Crime Directorate in June last year.

They seized $51.5 million of cash in various denominations, of which $1.5 million has still to be claimed, dozens of passports, cocaine, firearms, forged banking bonds, including one for $4.95 million, suitcases full of gold and cannabis.

The contents of some of the boxes are being investigated by the Met's Counter Terrorism Command, The Times has learned.

Seven hundred of the box holders are being referred to Customs for suspected tax evasion involving $22 million and officers have discovered a significant number of "ghosts" - people who have never paid any tax at all.

Elephant tusks worth $58,000 were also confiscated after a suspect's home was searched.

Police inquiries have led all over the world and officers expect the investigations to run for years to come. So far 11 people have been charged in connection with the raid, codenamed Operation Rize, and 40 have been arrested.

More than half of the boxes are thought to be connected to criminal activity.

No TrackBacks

TrackBack URL: http://www.politicalinsecurity.com/cgi-bin/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/163

Leave a comment

About Me

Belisarius

This is my place to vent a little and get things off my chest. I am a retired Marine who has interests in WMDs. Since WMD events are, thankfully, few in number, I spend a lot of time reading about people likely to use them. This takes me on some interesting tangents. I travel alot in my post retirement career and do not always have time to comment as I post articles. Give me a day or two to catch up if I skip comments, please.

Email: belisarius =at= politicalinsecurity =dot= com

militarysignatures.com

Elsewhere


My Recommended Reading List


WMD Links


iAwareables

iAwareables.com

Military sites


Anti-terrorists

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 4.21-en

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Belisarius published on March 24, 2009 9:06 PM.

Threat of dirty bombs 'increased' was the previous entry in this blog.

Julianne Moore to play HIllary Clinton in Lewinski saga is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.