How to spend 50m pounds ...
2006-02-24 18:24
London - Problem. How to get rid of £50m.
Easy if the money is legitimate, but a major headache if it
comes from what looks like being Britain's biggest-ever cash
robbery.
Six raiders, posing as police officers, got away with the
huge haul after they snatched the manager of a security depot on
Tuesday evening, took his wife and young son hostage and
threatened to kill them unless he co-operated.
But rather than planning a life of luxury, said money
laundering expert Peter Lilley, the gang had probably got away
with more cash than they could possibly handle.
He said they basically had three options: stash the money,
try to spend it, or launder it.
None of these would be easy and in some cases impossible, so
the gang might end up actually having to destroy it, Lilley told
Reuters.
"I think they have stolen too much money," he said. "If they
had got five million, 10 million, 15, it would have been much
easier than 50 million."
Although day-to-day life can be conducted in cash, buying
luxury items or property would be almost impossible.
"Stupid as it sounds, 50 million pounds of notes actually
has no value whatsoever until you convert it to value," he said.
"If you want to go and buy a Ferrari - if you come into the
garage with more than 10£000 pounds in cash there are now
certain money laundering rules that the garage has to follow
regarding the source of the funds.
"Can you just go and blow 50 million pounds? The answer is
no," Lilley said.
Money to burn?
One solution might be to get the money out of the country to
places where laundering might be possible - but much would
depend on how professional the gang were.
Criminals would be prepared to pay or lose 30% of the
cash to anyone who could help them out and there were organised
gangs able to launder sums of around £5m at a time
outside the UK through offshore companies, gold and property.
Lilley suggested unscrupulous financial bodies or companies
in Africa, former Soviet countries, the Middle East or South
America might also be prepared to take on the cash without
asking questions.
Another option might be the diamond market in Antwerp in
Belgium which was traditionally a cash-based market.
"The possibility of you being able to successfully launder
£50m in Britain is fairly minimal unless you
literally break it up into tranches of 2 000, 3 000 or 5 000 or
something like that," Lilley said.
On Friday, police said they had arrested their third suspect
in connection with the robbery, a woman trying to open an
account at a building society in southeast London. Media reports
said she had gone into the branch with thousands of pounds in
cash.
"If this is anything to do with the robbery, it's absolute
stupidity beyond belief," said Lilley. "That's the one thing you
don't do."
But he said it was possible the gang had no international
connections at all and that, after thinking "all their
Christmases had come at once," no longer knew what to do with
the cash.
"You think you're extremely rich but actually, until you can
do something with it, it's just paper."