TWO Stoke-on-Trent men have been jailed for a total of 16 years after heading up a gang which laundered �48 million of criminal funds.
Ringleader Tanveer Hussain Jaffery processed criminal profits for some of Britain's biggest gangsters, helped by next-door neighbour Naveed Ahmad.
The pair, and two of their couriers, were jailed at London's Isleworth Crown Court this week following a four-year investigation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC).
Jaffery, aged 61, of Headingley Grove, Trentham, ran the Remittance To Pakistan money transfer firm, called R2PK.com with right-hand man Ahmad, aged 45.
They used a website as a front to clean up huge amounts of cash for the criminal underworld, which was sent to Dubai and then through Pakistan before returning to Britain.
Criminals would sent Jaffery – dubbed 'Mr Persil' – coded texts instructing him to collect their cash.
The messages contained a serial number from a �5 note and a postcode or vehicle registration number to identify the pick-up.
Jaffery then dispatched his couriers to put the notes in sports bags.
When first arrested in October 2007, he had a holdall and briefcase containing �151,020 in �20 notes in his Mercedes.
Ahmad was arrested six months later as he was driving to Stoke in a Renault Laguna with almost �250,000 in cash.
Their two couriers, Mohammed Umer Farooq and Syed Yasir Abbas Shah, both of Forest Gate, East London, would then deposit the dirty cash into different branches of British banks in amounts of �25,000 or less, allowing the gang to stay below the radar – a process known to law enforcement officials as 'smurfing'.
Jaffery was the go-between for drug lords, including Mark Kinnimont, the ringleader of the country's largest cannabis smuggling gang. Kinnimont was convicted of smuggling �62 million of skunk cannabis in March 2010 and Jaffery had laundered �70,000 for him.
Jaffery and Ahmad were found guilty of transferring criminal property and being concerned in acquisition, retention, use or control of criminal property between May 2007 and September 2008.
They were jailed for 10 years and six years respectively, while the two couriers were each jailed for four years.
In sentencing, Judge Robin Johnson said: "Jaffery was the head of the organisation and used his co-defendants to protect himself. The money must have come from organised crime and almost definitely from drug trafficking."
Confiscation proceedings are under way. The investigation named Operation Umbrage involved officers from Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, West Yorkshire, the West Midlands, Staffordshire and London.
Peter Millroy, assistant director of criminal investigation for HMRC, said: "Money launderers such as these are as much a part of the criminal underworld as the fraudsters whose cash they clean.
"Our dedicated teams of investigators will pursue and bring to justice those who attempt to disguise and hide the illegal profits of other criminals."
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