March 2009

31.03.09 SOCA Issues Warning To Drug Traffickers

The Serious Organised Crime Agency is warning drug traffickers they will face a long time behind bars if they attempt to import drugs into the United Kingdom.

Tobagonians Owen Alfred and Oswin Moore were jailed for 18 and 15 years respectively in London today for their roles in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy. Ten other members of the organised crime gang, which has been completely dismantled by SOCA, were previously sentenced to a total of 144 years.

30.03.09 Wirral drug baron’s wife’s Champagne lifestyle comes to end

SHE enjoyed a life of the most vulgar excess, once joining her husband for a £600 chauffeur ride to Claridges for a £345 meal at Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant. But yesterday the glamorous wife of a Liverpool drugs baron was locked up for laundering his ill-gotten gains. Former beautician Sara Shea used her university-educated husband Keith’s drug money to pay for an enviable lifestyle of luxury.

16 March 2009 HM Treasury warns businesses of serious threats posed to the international financial system

All UK businesses regulated under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007, whether Money Service Businesses or other regulated persons should treat transactions associated with Iran as situations that by their nature can present a higher risk of money laundering or terrorist financing

11/03/09 Brown and tax havens – Treat ’em mean

However slowly, however piecemeal, progress is being made in forcing tax havens to become less secretive. Yesterday it was the turn of Jersey to sign an agreement with the UK that it will share information about offshore tax payments. Gordon Brown has been sounding tougher too. In his address to US Congress last week was this remarkable sentence: “How much safer would everybody’s savings be if the whole world finally came together to outlaw offshore tax havens?”