A passenger found with £1 million ($1.3 million) in cash in his suitcases at Heathrow Airport has admitted money laundering.
Mazen Al Shaar, 48, was on his way to Beirut when he was stopped by Border Force officers at the UK's biggest airport on March 15, and the money was seized.
Mr Al Shaar appeared at Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday and pleaded guilty to concealing, disguising, converting, transferring or removing criminal property under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
Mr Al Shaar's barrister Andrew Bird told the court that his client is a person “of good character” who was “acting under direction” rather than being the owner of the cash.
The amount he was caught with is about £1 million, Mr Bird said, but the final figure will be revealed once the UK's National Crime Agency finishes counting the cash, which is being held in a warehouse.
Prosecutor Atticus Blick told the court he accepted the case put forward by Mr Al Shaar's legal team that he was acting as a courier. As such, the offence is being treated as if he was acting under coercion and not for personal gain, he said.
Judge Karen Holt said Mr Al Shaar will be sentenced on April 29 and the offence carries a maximum prison sentence of three years but his guilty plea entitles him to a reduction to about two years.
Al Shaar, a supermarket worker from Middlesex, had claimed he only had £500 in cash on him and was leaving the UK to visit family. But officers searched his three suitcases and two of them contained the huge cash haul. He was convicted following an investigation by the National Crime Agency.
NCA operations manager Peter Jones said: “Cash like this is the lifeblood of organised crime groups. So many of the serious and organised crime threats facing the UK are driven by offenders’ greed, their thirst for money.”
Mr Jones said Al Shaar's conviction has “punched a hole” in a “crime group’s finances and very importantly, taken a trusted money launderer out of use”.
The Home Office said the seizure “highlights Border Force's dedicated efforts to protect our borders and keep the public safe”.
“Our officers are trained to spot suspicious behaviour and identify attempts to move illicit cash and other prohibited items across our borders,” said a representative. “We continue to work closely with law enforcement partners including the NCA to disrupt criminal networks.”
Al Shaar's arrest came soon after customs officials at Beirut Airport arrested a man arriving from Turkey with a bag containing $1.4 million in cash.
A group of couriers who smuggled cash into Dubai as part of a £100 million money-laundering operation were jailed in the UK in 2023.
Gang members were paid about £3,000 each to take business-class flights with money from drug deals vacuum-sealed and packed into suitcases, typically containing up to £500,000 and weighing 40kg each.
The network collected cash – believed to be the profits of drug deals – from criminal groups in the UK and took it to counting houses, usually in rented apartments in central London.
In less than a year, couriers communicating through a WhatsApp group called Sunshine and Lollipops took more than 80 flights carrying the money.
Their network smuggled more than £104 million from the UK to Dubai during 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020.
They were overseen by Abdullah Alfalasi, 47, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year after an operation led by the National Crime Agency.
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
- Use an offline private key, a physical device that requires manual activation, whenever you access your wallet.
- Avoid suspicious social media ads promoting fraudulent schemes.
- Only invest in crypto projects that you fully understand.
- Critically assess whether a project’s promises or returns seem too good to be true.
- Only use reputable platforms that have a track record of strong regulatory compliance.
- Store funds in hardware wallets as opposed to online exchanges.
The Equaliser 2
Director Antoine Fuqua
Starring: Denzel Washington, Bill Pullman, Melissa Leo, Ashton Sanders
Three stars
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Infiniti QX80 specs
Engine: twin-turbocharged 3.5-liter V6
Power: 450hp
Torque: 700Nm
Price: From Dh450,000, Autograph model from Dh510,000
Available: Now
THE CLOWN OF GAZA
Director: Abdulrahman Sabbah
Starring: Alaa Meqdad
Rating: 4/5
The%20specs
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How to wear a kandura
Dos
- Wear the right fabric for the right season and occasion
- Always ask for the dress code if you don’t know
- Wear a white kandura, white ghutra / shemagh (headwear) and black shoes for work
- Wear 100 per cent cotton under the kandura as most fabrics are polyester
Don’ts
- Wear hamdania for work, always wear a ghutra and agal
- Buy a kandura only based on how it feels; ask questions about the fabric and understand what you are buying
UAE v Gibraltar
What: International friendly
When: 7pm kick off
Where: Rugby Park, Dubai Sports City
Admission: Free
Online: The match will be broadcast live on Dubai Exiles’ Facebook page
UAE squad: Lucas Waddington (Dubai Exiles), Gio Fourie (Exiles), Craig Nutt (Abu Dhabi Harlequins), Phil Brady (Harlequins), Daniel Perry (Dubai Hurricanes), Esekaia Dranibota (Harlequins), Matt Mills (Exiles), Jaen Botes (Exiles), Kristian Stinson (Exiles), Murray Reason (Abu Dhabi Saracens), Dave Knight (Hurricanes), Ross Samson (Jebel Ali Dragons), DuRandt Gerber (Exiles), Saki Naisau (Dragons), Andrew Powell (Hurricanes), Emosi Vacanau (Harlequins), Niko Volavola (Dragons), Matt Richards (Dragons), Luke Stevenson (Harlequins), Josh Ives (Dubai Sports City Eagles), Sean Stevens (Saracens), Thinus Steyn (Exiles)
SANCTIONED
- Kirill Shamalov, Russia's youngest billionaire and previously married to Putin's daughter Katarina
- Petr Fradkov, head of recently sanctioned Promsvyazbank and son of former head of Russian Foreign Intelligence, the FSB.
- Denis Bortnikov, Deputy President of Russia's largest bank VTB. He is the son of Alexander Bortnikov, head of the FSB which was responsible for the poisoning of political activist Alexey Navalny in August 2020 with banned chemical agent novichok.
- Yury Slyusar, director of United Aircraft Corporation, a major aircraft manufacturer for the Russian military.
- Elena Aleksandrovna Georgieva, chair of the board of Novikombank, a state-owned defence conglomerate.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
