Criminals who laundered hundreds of millions of pounds of criminal cash through a West Yorkshire scrap jewellery business have been found guilty.
In what is believed to be the largest money laundering case ever in the UK four people were today found guilty of their part in channelling £266 million through Bradford-based company Fowler Oldfield. Gregory Frankel, 47, Daniel Rawson, 47, Haroon “Harry” Rashid, 54, and Arjun Babber, 32, were found guilty of money laundering following a trial at Leeds Crown Court.
The case, led by West Yorkshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit, uncovered a sophisticated operation that used Bradford-based Fowler Oldfield as a front to clean vast amounts of illicit money from criminal networks across the UK.
The police investigation found that cash was delivered to Fowler Oldfield in bulk, with couriers arriving daily from cities such as Glasgow, Manchester, and Merseyside carrying heavy bags filled with banknotes.
At its peak, the business was receiving an average of £1.7 million per day, concealed in sports bags, carrier bags, toy boxes, and even takeaway containers.
The cash was counted using professional money-counting machines and deposited into banks by legitimate cash-in-transit companies before being used to buy gold grain, which is untraceable and easier to conceal than bullion. Much of this gold is then believed to have been taken out of the UK.
The scale of the operation triggered suspicion in 2016 when a cash-in-transit company flagged the massive increase in cash deposits at Fowler Oldfield.
At times the amount of cash being banked by the company in one day was said to be similar to sums banked by a Premier League football club following a big match.
Investigators then conducted a meticulous review of financial records, emails, and 8,000 hours of CCTV footage, ultimately revealing that over £266 million had been laundered through the company between 2014 and 2016.
When officers executed a search warrant at Fowler Oldfield’s Bradford premises in September 2016, over £2.1million was seized. No-one has ever come forward to claim any of the cash belongs to them.
All four were found guilty of money laundering offences at Leeds Crown Court last week: Gregory Frankel, 47, from Shipley, was sentenced to 11 years, eight months; Daniel Rawson, 47, from Scarcroft in Leeds, was sentenced to 10 years, ten months; Haroon Rashid, 54, from Bradford, was sentenced to 10 years; Arjun Babber, 32, from London, was sentenced to 11 years.
