Jailed: Diamond dealers suspected of laundering £53 million to crime gangs

Jailed: The pair were arrested following an investigation by police and the National Crime Agency
Ray Forster/Flickr/Creative Commons licence CC BY-ND 2.0
Jamie Bullen28 October 2016
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A couple of diamond dealers suspected of laundering more than £50 million for organised crime gangs have been jailed.

Danny Koort, 52, and Jeanette Rosen, 48, of East Finchley, ran a legitimate diamond dealing business but used it as cover to clean the money, the Old Bailey heard.

Diaries revealed the pair used code names, including Champagne, Cristal and Caviar, to refer to customers while notes disclosed at least £20 million was laundered between April and November in 2014.

In total the couple are thought to have laundered up to £53 million for gangs in under two years. Koort was jailed for 11 years and Rosen for 10 after the pair were convicted for money laundering.

Andrew Russell, 54, an accomplice to the pair was also convicted of money laundering and jailed for four years.

He was arrested in July 2014 with £198,000 cash in a holdall in his car after he was kept under surveillance at a meeting at an Essex hotel where he collected a large bag

Later that day officers photographed Russell and Rosen meeting in a street but Russell did not transfer the money to her.

Rosen was eventually arrested in November 2014 when she was carrying just short of £170,000 in a bag in a central London street. Police searched her office where they found 235,215 Euros and £17,165 in cash.

The officers also searched her black Mercedes and discovered 10 pay-as-you-go mobile phones – nine with code names written on.

National Crime Agency senior investigating officer Tony Luhman said: “Koort and Rosen had enormous sums of money going through their books and were clearly doing a lot of business with many organised crime groups.

“Their conviction removes a money laundering facility on which numerous other criminals have depended, and now makes life harder for crooks looking to clean their dirty cash.”

DC Mark Edwards, of City of London Police, said: “Money launderers are integral to organised crime.

“Stopping operations like Koort and Rosen’s, where funds were laundered on an industrial scale, inflicts massive damage on serious organised gangs.

“We’d like to thank the NCA for their professional and dedicated support with this case”.

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