500 officers smash their way into thousands of safety-deposit boxes, could cost txpayers millions
on 11/03/2009 at 09:51 AM
Well the story kinda “took the long way home” to BMEWS here, but at least it arrived safely!
It’s a good read folks, and it made me seriously wonder why anyone would trust banks and their safe deposit boxes ever again. Being made to defend the legality of your cash, valuables, or diamonds is NUTS.
We used to respect people’s personal wealth as a matter of fact. Then the socialists got in power more and more places, and it became all about getting their hands on your money, by hook or by crook.
Guard your wealth carefully. There are more thieves in government, law offices, insurance companies and banks than there are on the streets.
Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met’s history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: ‘Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as “under investigation”, of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.’
Detective Chief Superintendent Nigel Mawer from SCD6 added, ‘Rize continues to be a hugely complex inquiry. We still have almost 700 boxes under active investigation as well as a number of trials pending.’
However, Lawyer David Sonn said: ‘Would an operation like Rize ever be run again? I doubt it.’
Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the operation are beginning to stack up.
And yet when it first kicked o ff, one of the things that had endeared Rize to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.
Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize criminals’ assets, it stated: ‘To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.’ This was ‘a challenging target’. However, ‘with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.’
In fact, the operation may end up costing the taxpayer a fortune. Rize has certainly helped put a number of hard-line criminals behind bars, but at what cost?
Sounds to me like one MAJOR screw up. A very wobbly warrant based on faulty thinking, and the incredible arrogance of the cops “lets have a rummage and see what we find”. BAD. Plus the whole guilty until proven innocent angle. What a crock.
This is what you get with an all-powerful socialist state. Sucks, don’t it?
Well if it was a legitimate bank that would be one thing but it isn’t. This is a cozy setup to hide the proceeds of crime. Look at the pile of cash above. If that is legitimate I am a Dutchman. The business started off ok, they catered to people who had a genuine fear of the authorities, such as Jews who had seen their assets stolen by governments. But the owners have no way of vetting who opens a safe deposit box. One bloke was bleating because the police seized £160,000 in cash. If you had that cash legitimately you would put it in a bank where it earned interest. The only reason to hide it is because you have reason not to attract the attention of the authorities. Keeping it in a dodgy safe deposit like this is highly suspicious. Most of the money comes from drug deals or tax evasion.
Oh and bear in mind if you come to the US or Canada with more than $10k the authorities will seize it if you don’t declare it. Same thing if you try and leave with that amount. It’s down to you to concoct a bullshit story to justify carrying that kind of wedge around. So this isn’t just a socialist fetish.
LyndonB:
I believe that huge whack of cash in the picture was the summed inventory of cash from all of the boxes that they opened. Notice how each bundle is separate and there appear to be many different sizes? Also of the notes that I can see in there, there are 20 pound notes, not the larger denominations
> If you had that cash legitimately you would put it in a bank where it earned interest.
You might, others might not trust banks as much, having been personally burned, or their parents, grandparents, or great grandparents were burned. I personally know people who do a lot of their business (wholesale grocery and produce delivery) in cash because that’s how the business is done, and has always been done. Cash is king, credit it looked down upon as a financial instrument of a grocery or restaurant that has gotten itself into financial difficulty and might not be able to pay its bill by next week. The amount of cash kept on hand for daily business is staggering to people not used to it.
And no, the 10k seizure at the border (unless you can prove your money isn’t from criminal proceeds) isn’t just socialist, I’ll give you that. Socialism is but one form of the statist-disease that infects many, many countries and their laws.
While we’re on the subject of proving one’s cash isn’t from criminal proceeds, how exactly does one prove that negative?
Whoops, left a thought unfinished there from the first paragraph.
... not the larger denominations that one would tend to see in large amounts from criminal ventures.
The whole story, plus that picture makes me willing to believe that most of the people were just looking for a way to tuck personal savings away in a non-electronic form, let interest be damned - at least the capital is protected and only inflation eats away at it in currency form. When converted to gold, diamonds, or other precious metals/stones, inflation has less of a potential bite on even that.
Yeah, there might be 5 to 10 percent criminal element using the company/service, and I’m sure they’ll unearth those. That doesn’t justify a fishing expedition like this, and baseless accusations of many innocent people that threatens their life savings.
On the whole, the government deserves to burn for this.
Tiger the notes with the reddish image are £50, but criminals don’t like to use these as they are easier to trace and banks scrutinise them more carefully. same with Scottish £100 notes, that’s why they use twenties. As for them being bundled up like that let me give you a personal example of just such a case. Many years back I worked for Customs. This was before the POCA. We caught a guy going out with £50,000 in cash. It took us the best part of a day just to count it. He had no reasonable story to account for why he had the money so we seized it.
He was, it subsequently transpired known to be able to land a light aircraft in fields and we suspected the money was the pay off for a drugs run. Eventually he came back with a cock and bull story that he needed the cash to buy a car and we had to release it. Nowadays he would be SOL.
You ask how does one prove the money isn’t from criminal proceeds? Well think that one through. If you sold your house and took the money in cash you would still have a record from the purchaser. If you ran a business mainly in cash you should still have till receipts to account for VAT. If the money is legit then you should have very little difficulty accounting for where you obtained it.
One of the major crime growth indistries in Britain is in “Asian” travel agencies. These people are basically crooks who cheat the taxman buy having all their transactions in cash. They are now popular amongst thieves as a soft target. You may recall this incident…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/4451508.stm
Somali ex asylum seekers tried to knock off a Paksitani travel agent/money laundering operation in the process they shot and killed a policewoman and the killer managed to get back to Somalia.I agree that fishing trips are unacceptable and doubtless if the police have fabricated evidence in order to get a warrant then heads should roll, but I think you misunderstand this particular incident. This safe deposit is not at some branch of Natwest or HSBC it is in a purpose built operation designed to keep under the police and taxmans radar. The shear number of passports and cash recovered as far as I am concerned indicates that there are a load of scumbags involved. If a few people are now having to prove where they got their substantial sums of cash from in order to avoid paying tax (and lets not forget interest on savings is taxable) I for one will not be shedding any tears.
> Many years back I worked for Customs.
This helps explain your viewpoint, thank you for the disclosure. I expect you saw a lot of weasel-like people trying to get away with illegal behavior.
Fair’s fair, so a little personal disclosure from my own life:
I was raised (in part) by my Grandfather who taught me my business ethics, and who did a lot of dealings in cash (he worked at the local aluminum extrusion plant, and also had a large hobby farm.) He paid his taxes honestly, though he did tend to yell about it, and complain bitterly about taxes to anyone who would listen. At 40, I find I’m becoming my grandfather. *heh*
In my eyes, a just system of laws never holds a person, or their property in a light of “guilty until proven innocent”. “Where did you get this large amount of money?” is not a question that should be legally permitted, unless charges are already being laid with supporting evidence that points to illegal activities used to acquire that wealth. The mere presence of the wealth is not prima facia evidence of illegal actions, nor should it be.
I shouldn’t have to answer that question, and “None of your damned business” should be a perfectly acceptable answer.
Personal property seizure by police and other state officials of our various governments has gotten way out of hand in the past couple of decades. For the governments, it’s a self-rewarding situation that pads their budgets and encourages them to do more. It’s an easy sell to the public too. “We’re getting tough on crime!” Problem is, if they can hold you to a “guilty until proven innocent” standard, a lot of criminals suddenly exist where none did before… Or, if you prefer: Something about foxes guarding hen-houses.
Okay, back to the article:
The two paragraphs in the article that I find very telling are these:
Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met’s history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of boxes seized.
Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: ‘Of the £53 million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and £33 million is now being referred to as “under investigation”, of which only £2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.’
80% provably innocent, with more likely to be discharged of suspicion… It’s because of this that I have a difficult time seeing this business as being solely catering to a criminal clientelle. I think closer to reality is that a few criminals were indeed using the service for exactly the hiding of ill gotten goods that you talked about, and Scotland Yard was lazy about doing the proper investigations in order to unearth the necessary evidence to narrowly focus on those individuals, and what we see is the natural outcome of that laziness.
Those 80%+ though? Sure, maybe they’re weird, maybe they’re a bit paranoid about electronic funds and banks, but “weird” is okay in my books, they aren’t harming anyone by squirreling away cash in a safety deposit box (except maybe themselves by denying themselves the opportunity to make interest on that capital.) My Grandfather lived through the Great Depression. Part of me understands these people and their motivations.
People should have a legal right to hold and store their personal wealth in a manner of their choosing, and they should not have to worry about their own government trying to seize their personal wealth merely because they’ve amassed a significant amount of it.
Oh, and the small percentage of actual criminals that they seem to have turned up as part of this investigation and search? Throw the book at them… Unless of course the evidence ends up being the legal “fruit of the poisoned tree”, then you’ve got to throw it out and let actual criminals go free, sickening as that is. If the warrant was botched from the outset, I hope the prosecution turns on the individual who asked for it, and the legal bar takes a hard long look at the judge who granted it. It’s they who have to answer for criminals that walk free because of poor police procedures and lazy investigative work.
But of course, that won’t likely happen. The law circles the wagons around its own, covering up for laziness, stupidity, and callousness, and thus further degrades the respect for “rule of law” in the minds and hearts of the citizenry.
Gah.... but I’m not bitter. O_o
AGT I do tend to agree with you as regards people being able to squirrel away their wealth without government interference, but what I am trying to get over (albeit not very well) is that this story is suspect. They have filtered out much of it and put a slant on it to make it appear that the majority of people are hard done by and are victims of a police state.
This raid was part of a series of raids by the Met Police on a number of safe deposit boxes. The article focuses on Finchley Road which is in North London and traditionally a lot of orthodox Jews live there. These are the kind of people who often don’t trust the authorities with good reason and will store diamonds and other valuables. However it was just one of the sites targetted. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/crime/article4053869.ece http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jun/07/ukcrime
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/pair-arrested-after-£14m-raid Given the spinlessness of the Crown Prosecution Service the police have to have good intelligence on the owners of these organisations.Lyndon, the slant may indeed be on the article, I’ll give you that, but the percentage of people who have been declared innocent, versus those suspects still remaining and those charged/convicted is staggeringly BAD. Those numbers speak for themselves, and indicate this was a large dragnet/fishing expedition on the part of the law, which both you and I already agree is a very bad thing.
The “Proceeds of Crime Act” of 2002 enabled this kind of dragnet, and after seeing similar asset forfeiture laws, I’ve started to piece the larger puzzle together, and I’m not liking what I’m seeing:
- Legislators, having run their governments’ budgets in the red for decades are starting to realize they’re in deep shit with regards to ever paying it back. It’s not going to happen, they just hope the eventual collapse doesn’t happen on their watch. They can’t easily raise taxes any further, the citizens are similarly running their budgets paycheck to paycheck, and can’t take much more, but the government still needs another source of money…
- Enter the “Asset Forfeiture” laws. These look good on their face, and can be claimed to have the “Best of Intentions”, with a great purpose most people will agree with: Deny a criminal the proceeds of his crimes.
- The government gets control of any seized assets, and usually ends up liquidating them via auction. This flows back into the budgets of various departments/ministries/agencies/projects who become dependent on them and want more, providing the incentive to continue and increase the practice.
- Further laws get passed every year by legislators, many of which criminalize more and more previously acceptable lawful acts and behaviors, and thus you get more and more potential criminals to fleece via asset forfeiture.Doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, does it?
I concede you’ve got some points about catching some criminals and that the article was written in a manner to gain sympathy for the people using the safety deposit boxes, innocent and suspect alike. Personally, I just can’t get past the facts that point to a giant fishing expedition on the part of the police and government. That’s not how free and just societies are supposed to comport themselves.
11/03/2009 at 06:25 PM
11/03/2009 at 07:36 PM
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