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Front page of the Independent right now, June 5th: Police find £16m, jewellery and Renaissance art in raid on safety deposit boxes Just wait till the war is on. We are all criminals now. You're rich? We'll take it. Got civil liberties? Yeah, we'll take them too. Reasonable grounds for search and seizure of an individuals deposit box? Naah, we'll take all 7000. My emphasis below.
It was an unprecedented police strike against some of Britain's most wanted organised-crime bosses – an intensive investigation that took two years to pursue and delved into the murkiest depths of the criminal underworld.
Reaching a dramatic culmination on Monday, more than 300 officers were involved in simultaneous swoops at seven addresses in some of London's most illustrious neighbourhoods. And, as they emerged from the raids clutching thousands of innocuous-looking safety deposit boxes, the detectives leading Operation Rize couldn't help but wonder what was inside.
Yesterday, as the Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Directive revealed the storage facilities' contents, their questions were answered. The raids had yielded a haul so remarkable, even Scotland Yard's most seasoned were stunned.
A spectacular collection of jewellery, Renaissance paintings and millions of pounds in cash were seized from the locations in Park Lane, Hampstead and Edgware. The ill-gotten gains – believed to be the proceeds of major organised crime – had been kept hidden in 7,000 deposit boxes for some of the country's wealthiest individuals.
Having searched fewer than half of the boxes in the first three days, officers said that the final total was expected to be "astronomical".
[snip]...
Most of the boxes are believed to have been used by a range of criminals, though officers conceded some innocent members of the public had been caught up in the case. They had, they explained, been inundated with phone calls from box owners as they try to sort legitimate property from the spoils of criminal activity.
Two directors of the company Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, Jacqueline Swan, 44, and Leslie Sieff, 60, were arrested on suspicion of money-laundering offences and bailed to return to a central London police station in early September.
Reaching a dramatic culmination on Monday, more than 300 officers were involved in simultaneous swoops at seven addresses in some of London's most illustrious neighbourhoods. And, as they emerged from the raids clutching thousands of innocuous-looking safety deposit boxes, the detectives leading Operation Rize couldn't help but wonder what was inside.
Yesterday, as the Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Directive revealed the storage facilities' contents, their questions were answered. The raids had yielded a haul so remarkable, even Scotland Yard's most seasoned were stunned.
A spectacular collection of jewellery, Renaissance paintings and millions of pounds in cash were seized from the locations in Park Lane, Hampstead and Edgware. The ill-gotten gains – believed to be the proceeds of major organised crime – had been kept hidden in 7,000 deposit boxes for some of the country's wealthiest individuals.
Having searched fewer than half of the boxes in the first three days, officers said that the final total was expected to be "astronomical".
[snip]...
Most of the boxes are believed to have been used by a range of criminals, though officers conceded some innocent members of the public had been caught up in the case. They had, they explained, been inundated with phone calls from box owners as they try to sort legitimate property from the spoils of criminal activity.
Two directors of the company Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, Jacqueline Swan, 44, and Leslie Sieff, 60, were arrested on suspicion of money-laundering offences and bailed to return to a central London police station in early September.
:p)
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