The Hiding of Wealth: The Implications for the Prevention and Control of Crime and the Protection of Economic Stability Available to Purchase

In July, a London solicitor was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment for laundering £30m, being the proceeds of drugs and other uncustomed substances which one of his clients had smuggled into the country. The judge who sentenced him observed this was the largest money laundering operation he had come across. In fact, in 1998, the operator of a bureau de change in Notting Hill Gate in west London was sentenced to 14 years in prison for laundering an even larger sum. It was the fact that the defendant was a solicitor, that the amounts were so huge and that he used the respectable front of a London solicitor's practice for what used to be called ‘receiving’, or ‘fencing’ the proceeds of crime, that makes this case so notable.