Couple admit multi-million pound money laundering operation
9:21am Tuesday 9th February 2010
By Wiltshire Times Reporter
A husband and wife from a village near Trowbridge ran a company which laundered millions of pounds for illicit gambling in North America, a court had been told.
Net Payment Solutions, which was operated by Gavin and Louise Lazarus, was used for shifting huge sums to and from Canada and the USA.
Now the company, based in Steeple Ashton, has had more than a million pounds confiscated after being prosecuted for money laundering.
And a judge at Swindon Crown Court also imposed a nominal fine of £250 on the company, at a hearing on Monday.
Kerry Musgrave, prosecuting, said Gavin Lazarus, 39, was the director of the firm and his 37-year-old wife Louise, from whom he is now estranged, was the company secretary.
She said Net Payment Solutions was set up early in the decade with the assistance of Maurice Rose, a member of the couple’s extended family.
The company ran a number of bank accounts in Euros and US dollars with Lloyds TSB but in 2005 the bank became suspicious and closed them down.
She said the couple were advised by their accountant as well as friends and family that it was for fear of money laundering.
But they continued to operate as before, she told the court, having transferred their business to another bank.
Miss Musgrave said they would have been aware that what the company were doing was wrong as the money came from illicit gaming.
She said between the end of June 2005 and the start of July 2007 about $16m was paid into the accounts and $14.5 went out.
During that time she said the couple were allowed to withdraw $400 a month.
She said the major transactions were frequently for five figure sums which could never be construed as the stakes or winnings from small time gambling.
Much of the money came from and went to companies the couple had never heard of in North America which it is thought were owned or run by Maurice Rose.
Miss Musgrave told the court the public interest in prosecuting the company was to seek an order under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
She said if the firm was fined the court could confiscate the £1,313,684.33p which was still in the bank when the courts froze it.
The couple, who both gave the court an address on High Street, Steeple Ashton, pleaded guilty to money laundering in their capacity as the company.
Charges against them personally were dropped when the company pleaded guilty to the offence.
Alex Daymond, for Gavin, said that is a nominal fine were imposed the couple may put the cash into the company to settle it.
However there is no power to force the company, which has had its assets confiscated, to pay the fine such as the threat of a jail term.
Judge Douglas Field fined the company £250 and ordered the confiscation of the £1,313,684.33p which is the sum in the frozen company account at current exchange rates.
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