The Money: Travel agency laundered £10m in a year

Jun 1 2008

THE tiny travel agency in Glasgow's southside seemed no different to any of the others specialising in low-cost air deals to Pakistan.

But the peeling green paint on the shabby shopfront of Makkah Travel in Pollokshields concealed the tiny bucket shop's status as a multi-million-pound money laundry for Scotland's richest gangsters.

Suitcases and bulging holdalls would be delivered to the shop on the junction of Kenmure Street and Albert Drive next to the Spice Garden supermarket.

The bags would be left there and returned on the next visit after being emptied of the dirty money belonging to Jamie Stevenson and other millionaire criminals - grubby tenners and twenties bound into £5000 rolls collected from Scotland's addicts and users.

A Customs investigation codenamed Seraph, which eventually shut down the cash pipeline, was to discover £10million had been moved through the shop in a little over a year.

Once handed over by couriers, the money would be transferred to Pakistan under hawala, an informal worldwide banking network used by families and firms throughout Asia for centuries.

Built on trust and an international network of unofficial money-movers, its attraction to Stevenson and other Scots gangsters is obvious. Lttle or no paper trail is left by the millions being sent abroad and there is no official record at its destination.

The Home Office estimates that £2billion of dirty money remains in Britain each year while £3.3billion is sent abroad. Many of the millions flooding out of Scotland were being delivered to Makkah Travel by underworld bagmen.

Customs investigators suspect that Zohaib Assad, 26, and his accomplice Mohammad Ahmad, 53, transferred £10million of drugs money in just 14 months.

One of Stevenson's associates said: "It worked like a dream for him but all these guys were into it. You basically asked the shop to send the cash to the Pakistani equivalent of Mr Mickey Mouse. "It is picked up the next day in Islamabad or wherever and there is no way of discovering who sent the money or received it.

"Everyone talks about money laundering and all the ways the cash is whitened up but, way before it becomes a line buried in some company's accounts or a digitised electronic transfer, drugs money is literally dirty - thousands of used notes stuffed into bags and cases."

A detective confirmed the sheer physical mass of the money being made by Scotland's drug dealers is an opportunity for law enforcers.

He said: "We're not talking about a cheque that can be slipped into a top pocket. These guys get paid in cash and lots of it. It's bulky. Every day they face the problem of hiding it until they can get rid of it safely.

"Stevenson could stay away from the drugs but he had to get close to the money. That was his Achilles heel and, in the end, that's how we got him."

Some of Stevenson's money streamed out of Scotland to Islamabad to be cleaned and hidden in legitimate accounts or property deals. Some went to the United Arab Emirates and to China.

Huge sums would also be steered to the money-changing shops lining the streets of Peshawar and Quetta, along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan - the cities where opium brokers do business.

After a five-week trial that ended in March 2006, Assad and Ahmad - who had no criminal record - were convicted of seven charges under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

It was the first trial in Scotland based on the 2002 legislation. More were to follow although legal teams for Assad and Ahman, who maintain their innocence, are appealing their convictions.

As the men allegedly behind Makkah's money laundering were being convicted, another travel agent was also being jailed in a case underlining the astonishing scale of the cleansing operation run through the hawala system.

Shahid Nazir Bhatti, owner of the Bradford Travel Agency, was sentenced to three years.

Customs investigators suspect, in just over four years, £500million of drugs money was laundered through the cash pipeline from West Yorkshire to Pakistan. Scots gangsters - including Stevenson and his gangland ally, Ayrshire drug baron John Gorman - were among those around Britain sending their millions to Yorkshire to be laundered.

One source with knowledge of Stevenson's smuggling empire said: "Over 20 years he could easily have brought in drugs worth £2billion on the street.

"He was selling wholesale but was still making £15,000 or so for every kilo of heroin or coke. One of his shipments could be 150 kilos and he was bringing in hundreds and hundreds of kilos every year.

"I would be very surprised if Stevenson will not be coming out of jail to at least £20million in clean cash and assets."