By Gavin Mackintosh-
five men jailed for importing heroine have lost £1m worth of cars and properties, four years after being jailed.
Five men from West Yorkshire who imported drugs into the UK by sending baby powder to Pakistan to swap for heroin will have nearly £1m of their assets after a confiscation hearings at Leeds Crown Court today.
Khalid Mahmood, Faisal Khan, Fiaz Ahmed, Usman Bari, and Yasser Uddin were convicted jailed in 2013. The five crooks are currently serving sentences totalling 109 years. The courts passed confiscation orders on Tuesday amounting to £1million. The confiscation included a Bentley, a GT Continental,and a £40,000 Hublot watch. The gang were shipping parcels of baby powder out to Pakistan via the postal system which were returned by criminal associates, the contents having been substituted with heroin.
The enterprise as a whole was assessed to have generated £4.7m. The confiscation orders totalling £900,497.87 included an £80,000
property in Bradford, a Bentley GT Continental, equity in three further properties including one in Pakistan and a £40,000 Hublot watch.
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All the orders must be paid in full within three months otherwise the
default sentences totalling eleven years will be activated to run concurrently with the sentences currently being served.The investigation run by the Regional Asset Recovery Team working with its partners in Border Force and West Yorkshire Police Regional Organised Crime Unit.
Mrs. Senior, the Head of Yorkshire and Humber Regional Organised Crime Unit & North East Regional Asset Recovery Team,Ms senior, said in a statement:
“Those who choose to traffic in controlled drugs, particularly Class A such as in this case heroin, in addition to lengthy prison sentences can expect a rigorous investigation of their finances. Today’s orders demonstrate our determination to ensure that these defendants are stripped of any gains arising from their offending”.
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The gang were jailed in 2013 for the offences. An assessment of the assets to be confiscated took four years, partly because of the need to distinguish items that were the proceeds of their scam from those assets purchased through legitimate money or money that could not be proven to be connected to the huge scam. Assets purchased before . Police judgement was used to make the distiction, but £1m is a lot of money’s worth of items to be confiscated. The five men were doing well in their fast scam but could not resist the expanding their cash empire until police were tipped about their grand operation.
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