20 Jan 2011

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23916084-safe-deposit-box-company-director-turned-blind-eye-to-money-laundering.do

A company director who ran a London safe deposit company at the centre of a £50 million police raid today admitted turning a blind eye to money laundering.

Police seized what they described as a "treasure trove" of cash, drugs and guns in the unprecedented operation in June 2008.

It was aimed at unearthing vital leads into every branch of organised crime in Britain from murder to gun crime, drug trafficking and paedophile gangs.

The raid was carried out on three high security concrete and steel vaults owned by Safe Despoit Centres Ltd in Park Lane, Hampstead and Edgeware.

Milton Woolf, 54 of Golders Green, pleaded guilty to 14 charges and will be sentenced later at Southwark Crown Court.

He admitted failing to report money laundering by boxes holders and posessing a revolver, ammunition, false passports, cash profits from other people's crimes and having a $60,000 counterfeit currency notes.

He denied further counts of perverting the course of justice and fraud which will lie on the file.

Jacqueline Swan, 46 a director of SDC, and Leslie Sief, 64, a past SDC director, have also pleaded guilty.

Swan, of Barnet who was arrested at the Mayfair office, admitted six offences including some in conjunction with Woolf, who was the "controlling figure."

Sief, of West Hampstead, has admitted one count of possessing $60,000 of counterfeit currency between January 1996 and June 2008.

Sief and Woolf are both South African-born and have lived in the UK since the 1980s.

Operation Rize was launched in 2007 to target the top tier of criminal masterminds who were believed to have rented the company's security boxes.

The court heard that two undercover officers - known as Vinnie and Billy - posed as potential box holders and found company directors gave just "ip service" to the legal obligation to report the obvious money laundering going on under their noses.

Vinnie even changed cash into 500 euro notes at the firm's bureau de change and Swan showed him how to avoid suspicion, the court heard.

Woolf would drill open the boxes of holders behind in rent and seize the contents not for his own criminal purposes but as collateral against non payment.

After 18 months of surveillance and preparation more than 300 officers moved in and opened 6,717 private boxes.

They uncovered an astonishing haul including £53 million in cash, some of it stuffed into supermarket bags, as well as guns, drugs and gems.

Police also discovered gold dust, passports, chequebooks, credit cards, a larbe amount of paedophile material and four paintings by Dutch and Russian artists.

From the evidence they found police were able within 15 months of the raid to make 40 arrests and bring 11 prosecutions leading to £2.83 million of court-ordered confiscations.

Woolf will also be subject to confiscation proceedings.

The court heard he had been subject to a restraint order since the raid and has been seeking to realise assets behind the back of the police and prosecutors.