Mortgage Solutions | 24 Sep 2010 | 11:59

http://www.mortgagesolutions-online.com/mortgage-solutions/news/1735210/estate-agent-accused-laundering-huge-amounts-dirty-cash

A Manchester estate agent is alleged to have agreed to launder hundreds of thousands of pounds of dirty money on behalf of an international crime ring.

Manchester Crown Court was told that Nasrullah Khan had co-ordinated the transfer of the proceeds of criminal activity into third-party bank accounts, via his Cheetham Hill business, Khan Properties.

The prosecution claimed that bags full of cash were picked up on a regular basis by Kahn's office manager Fazal Hussain, who passed them on to Khan's son Haseef to deposit.

Mark Connor, prosecuting, told the jury that the laundering was carried out at the bidding of an unidentified ‘controller'.

Khan Properties was raided on 15 July, 2008, when two holdalls containing bank notes worth £355,000 were recovered.

Minutes earlier, Fazal Hussain had been seen to collect two holdalls after making two separate collections near the office, one from an unidentified male and from a man called Mark Owens, said to be the go-between with an ‘organised crime group'.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency, which had the property under surveillance, has no evidence of where the money came from, but prosecutors claimed it had to be dirty money given the secrecy with which such large amounts were handled.

Shredded documents, which were reconstructed by police, revealed that the money had been paid in to accounts at HSBC Cheetham Hill, and branches of NatWest, Abbey, Barclays, RBS and Lloyds TSB in central Manchester, over a three week period prior to the raid.

They also relied on CCTV footage and phone records, some of which are alleged to be in code from the ‘controller'.

Connor said of the defendants: "They were, it's alleged, tasked by at least one organised criminal group to place the proceeds of crime into the financial system. They were one cog, but a very important cog, in a large operation controlled from overseas."

He added: "This was a significant operation requiring accounting techniques of a sophisticated nature. We're talking lots of cash and multiple third party bank accounts, all expecting legitimate debts and invoices to be paid off."

Nasrullah Khan, 51, Haseef Ullah Khan, 28, both of Dane Road, Sale, and Fazal Hussain, 46, of Woodlands Street, Cheetham Hill, deny entering into a money laundering arrangement.

Mark Vincent Owens, 28, of Langley Beck, Widnes, Cheshire, admitted the same charge. Khan's brother, Chaudhry Amjad Khan, is also alleged to have been involved in collecting, distributing and banking the cash and is being sought by police.