Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Flower companies. Yeah. Food companies. Yeah. Yeah. Real estate. Yeah. Wow. A marble and ceramic trading company. Oh, gosh. The list goes on and on and on, doesn't it? I mean, there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple of dozen companies here, is there? I mean, this is one thing that I don't even think the NCA are aware of the extent of, you know, how many companies and how diverse it was. It really is.
Yeah, I love David Collins. So I'm a little bit nervous. I've never done this before. Yeah, yeah. David Collins is speaking to a gold trader. They met a few days before. Can you just remind me, so how much gold am I able to buy? I think you said I could spend 100,000 dirham. Is that right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The reason David says he's nervous is that he's undercover. He's continuing his investigation into how criminals like the Sunshine and Lollipops gang were able to carry millions of pounds worth of dirty money from the UK to Dubai and where the money went next. David's had a tip that the money can end up being turned into gold.
I see. The trader asks David if he's planning on taking the gold home to the UK. Yeah. He explains that simply taking a solid bar of gold might cause problems with UK customs.
So the way you get round it is you put it as a chain round your neck? The trader explains it's easy to change the gold into jewellery. That way, no one in customs is going to look at it.
Meaning you can carry that gold home unchecked, then sell the gold and spend the money. They discuss gold prices, when to invest, until David thinks it's time to ask the question. Just between you and me, just between you and me, literally, some of the money might be from, like, drugs in the UK. Yeah.
David says the money might be from drugs in the UK. The gold trader pauses for a second, then says, there is no issue on that one. I'm Fiona Hamilton, and from The Times, The Sunday Times, and News Corp Australia, this is Cocaine Inc. Episode 7, The Dubai Gold Rush. So final destination is to Dubai? It is, yes.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Dubai International Airport with the local time. It's 9:50... Arrived in Dubai late one Monday night. Just like Francesca, the Kashmir who I spoke to in the last episode, I picked up my bags and strolled past customs. Unlike Francesca, I didn't have millions of pounds stuffed into my suitcase to declare. I'll take this one. Once outside, I get a taxi to my hotel. Very futuristic car.
A brand new Tesla. We drive down the Sheikh Zayed Road, the main motorway that runs the length of the city. Skyscraper after skyscraper, filled with offices, condos and hotels whizz by. This city is the beating heart of the United Arab Emirates, one of the more business friendly economies in the Middle East. Here on the right side is Burj Al Arab. Oh, that's the Burj Al Arab? Yes. Wow.
It looks like a wind sail doesn't it? Seeing the Burj Al Arab hotel piqued my interest. It's a seven star hotel, yeah if that's even a thing. My taxi driver says it's about £10,000 a night to stay. How much would it cost to have a wedding there?
I don't know. A lot. And it's here where Daniel Kinahan, an Irish boxing promoter accused of running a global drug cartel dubbed the Cocaine Cowboys, got married in 2017. The wedding was said to be a who's who of those in the global drug trade.
the US Drug Enforcement Administration reportedly calculated that those on the guest list had shipped 23 billion pounds worth of cocaine into Europe between them. Do you take customers there? So many times. Have you? What jobs do they do though? Did he never tell you? Are you like business people? They never tell the secret how they earn money. How they got so much.
They never tell the secret of how they earn money. Maccabi jokes. This year it was revealed that Daniel Kinnahan's wife owns a multi-million dollar villa in Dubai with gleaming white walls, elegant arched doorways and bright red roof tiles. I remember Pete Costa, the Dutch pineapple trader linked to the torture chambers Fiona went to check out earlier in this series.
He's said to have had a Dubai real estate portfolio worth millions. It feels as if this modern city of luxurious skyscrapers and fancy shopping malls has become the place of choice for cartel bosses to kick back and relax, away from their home countries in a different jurisdiction.
Which is what's led me to the next stage in our investigation into the global cocaine business. Looking at what happens to the profits. Once you've got your criminal cash to Dubai, how do you then launder that money on a large scale? Well, you want to get it into the legitimate economy and that makes it harder for law enforcement to trace it. And I've been tipped that a good way to do this is to invest it in gold.
Brilliant, thanks for that. So this is the centre of... The main centre is this big shop. The next day I leave the main tourist spot of Dubai and go to an area known as the Gold Souq. A souq is Arabic for market and this one is full of gold traders at their stalls. So you can buy gold here? Yeah, yeah. KGs. You can buy in the KGs. What, like bars of it? Yeah. Wow, do people do that? Yeah.
My taxi driver drops me off. Thank you so much. Bye now. The streets are full of small stalls, perfume shops, coffee stands. As well as this, there's plenty of gold shops. Dubai was established in the 19th century as a small fishing village, but since then it has boomed. Oil money, tourism and construction have seen the money flooding in, but gold is also a big part of Dubai's economy.
This souk I've just arrived at has existed since the 1940s when traders and merchants from Iran and India first set up their shops. By the 1960s this area had become an important hub in the global gold trade and today people say there's over 10 tons of gold in this souk at any one time. But there's a dark side to this story. I've been told that cash is invested into gold by criminals
So how simple would it be for a British criminal to come here and do this? I enter part of the souk and now I'm officially undercover. I'm in an area which feels a bit like a department store, lined with display counters and then gold trader shops off to the side. I feel on edge.
There's plenty of security guards. Everywhere I look are glass shop windows dripping with gold jewellery hanging from packed displays. They are perfect, exactly what I wanted. I buy a cheap pair of knock-off sunglasses and a nice belt and I ask for a recommendation of a decent gold trader. Where would I go here? To buy, invest in gold. Where's that?
and directed to his shop. There's a group of men sitting about making deals underneath a TV screen showing the day's gold market prices. Is this today's market? That's today's market price. On the wall there's a portrait of the ruler of Dubai. I strike up a conversation with one of them. Hello. Hi.
I'm just trying to work out how I've invested in gold, basically. He's in his early 30s with thick black hair and an easy smile. We're going to call him Rashid. I won't use his real name. How many grams do you want? Er, say 20,000 pounds sterling. So you only need to add that up? Yeah. Rashid reaches into a safe and shows me a gold bar.
So that's a small... That's heavier than you'd expect. It's exactly how you'd imagine it would look. A rectangular block, like the kind you see being piled into a robber's van in a Hollywood heist film. It's quite small, isn't it? Rashid's polite, but it's noisy here and not private enough for the kind of deal I want to make. Great. Thank you for your help. Brilliant. Thank you. Nice to chat.
Outside Rashid's store, I pass a couple more display counters. I enter another gold trader's. You're just shopping around for the best price. Much the same happens. The trader pulls a bar of gold from a safe and puts it on the counter. How much? I leave but I'm a bit spooked. I wasn't sure he trusted me. I might have just been imagining things but I've done a lot of undercover work and sometimes you get a feeling that the person doesn't quite buy your story.
I felt more secure chatting with Rashid, so I head out of the gold souk and a few days later give Rashid a call. We get pleasantries out the way and quickly move on to business.
Staying undercover, my plan is to pretend I'm actually a cocaine gangster with a fortune in drug profits I need to launder. Rashid suggests how I could carry gold out of Dubai, back into the UK, no questions asked. He says I can turn my potential gold purchase into a chain to wear through customs without paying any taxes and that he has British customers who have done it in the past.
So the way you get round it is you put it as a chain around your neck? Exactly, exactly, yeah. I want to find out how easy it would be for a cocaine gangster to buy thousands of pounds worth of gold here and what, if any, checks there would be on the source of the money. So what is Rashid willing to accept?
Just name and invoice and your passport number and photo of your passport on your phone. That's good enough for me. He says all he really needs is my name for the invoice and my passport number to put on the bill. A photo of my passport on my phone is fine. If you're sitting here living in Dubai and you travel only sometimes, then there's no problem. But what about the source of my funds?
If I was looking to launder my cocaine profits, I certainly wouldn't want anyone doing checks on where that money was from. So I want to see how much gold Rashid might be willing to sell me without any paperwork or checks. The one thing is, so do you need any checks to know where I got the money? If it's more than like 2 kg, then only I will need the facts, that's all. Otherwise, I don't need it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sorry David, your voice is breaking, I can't hear you. Okay. No, it's just some of the money might be from like drugs in the UK, but I'm not sure. But if there's no cheques, is that okay? To bring power here, but you're going to bring your terms to me, right? Exactly, yeah. Yeah, so there's no issue on that one.
So what just happened? I just confessed some of the money may come from drugs and crime. At first, Rashid says he can't hear me, but after repeating it, I'm confident he's understood my proposition. He says if I bring him dirhams, the local currency, and not British pounds, then there is no issue on that one. So what does this actually mean?
Rashid has admitted that he will sell me 3 kilograms of gold in cash knowing the source of that money could well be from drugs such as cocaine. That's £180,000 of criminal money or 340 grand in Aussie dollars. Nearly a quarter of a million of US. It's that simple.
If you as a cocaine boss running a cartel could get your money here to Dubai, you can launder nearly £200,000 with barely a proper passport check. All right. Great stuff. I'll be in touch. Take care. All right. Bye. Bye.
So that was fascinating. He was not kind of phased at all. Yeah, I mean, I am amazed actually by how easy it would be. You know, if I was a criminal, we could be moving kilos of gold very quickly in the next few weeks. Would be able to quite easily launder significant amounts of money through that gold trader. Following that call to Rashid, I revealed that I was in fact a journalist.
I asked him if he had anything to say about our phone conversation. He told me that his business would require evidence of the source of funds for gold purchases of around £10,000 and he had no knowledge of criminals buying gold in Dubai. If you look at it as a business model, you'll always try and stay one step ahead of your competitor. And there are some really clever people involved in crime and they will always find another way to stay half a step ahead.
And unfortunately, it's just a reality. We often have to play catch up. This is Ian Truby. Ian's the National Crime Agency detective I spoke to in the last episode who helped put Abdullah Al-Falassi, the ringleader of the Sunshine and Lollipops gang, behind bars. That's the group that smuggled over £100 million out of the UK using Al-Falassi's business, Omnivest Gold Trading, as a cover.
Once the money got to Dubai, Ian and his team believe it was laundered. But how exactly the gang did it was harder to work out. Sterling's gone in, been changed into local currency, and that currency is in turn being handed off to somebody else. We've got some evidence that there were some investment in gold, there was some investment in mining interests. But how much of that investment was from this particular cash, I can't comment. I just don't have that data.
Why gold? Gold is a really attractive commodity for criminals. It holds its value. You can source it from countries where there is no control, places like Africa, South America. There's an awful lot of illegal mining going on. Unfortunately, I don't think it's too difficult to get that gold into the legitimate supply chains, get it stuck in a vault, and that's it. That value is sat there. It's an attractive commodity. It's an appreciating commodity.
So following the Threadfrove, I mean, quite literally, coca plants are being turned into cocaine, transported by the cartels. You know, there's commodities being sold in the UK. That is then being turned into...
into gold bars at the end of that process. From my interpretation of what I've seen on this, an element of that was happening. Dubai being a gold market now as much as anything else, that gold market would also potentially be used by the criminals for laundering purposes or the value transfer to buy more cocaine or other illicit commodity.
So as Ian says, the National Crime Agency believes some of what Al-Falassi did with the money from the Sunshine and Lollipops gang could have ended up in the Dubai gold souk. Now it was time to fully turn my attention to Al-Falassi and his front company Omnivest Gold Trading. This was the company whose name was on letters that the cash mules showed customs officials when arriving at Dubai airport.
I got hold of some documents that showed Omnivest Gold Trading was located in an area of Dubai called Business Bay. An area packed with corporate high-rises and as ever swanky hotels. It's hot, you sometimes forget when you're in Dubai with all the air con in the hotels, taxi and metro that this is a city in the desert. I make my way to one specific office building
It's a 36-storey glass skyscraper called Prime Tower. It's in this building that Abdullah Al Falassi's company Omnivest Gold Trading was registered. The documents also reveal that Omnivest Gold was liquidated in November 2021, just days before Al Falassi was arrested. In layman's terms, that means it officially stopped trading and closed down.
But I want to know if there's any trace of it left in this building and if anyone remembers anything about it. And to be on the safe side, I stay undercover. Dubai and the UAE is not a country with great media freedom. I don't want my cover to be blown. So I head inside pretending to be a British businessman, if anyone asks. I walk quickly past security looking straight ahead and find the lifts.
I go up a few floors. From the documents I'm pretty sure I've got the right one. I exit the lift and I'm in a corridor filled with cream walls, dark floor tiles and windowless wooden doors. Each one has a small sign to the side of the frame with the name of the business and an office number.
Do you remember Omnivest Gold Trading? I have seen this name. I think I have seen, because we are not going that side, but I thought I have seen somewhere. Maybe he can guide you. One of the office workers walking through the halls remembers Omnivest Gold Trading. He confers with a colleague or friend who then takes me to where he thinks it once was. If you take the left from here, I will show you. Oh, thank you. Thank you.
So I'm knocking on a door, it's got no sign on the door whatsoever. A man answers. Hi. Hello there. Looking for Omnivest, gold, trading. No sir, my English is not good. No good. I'm trying to look in to see a bit more, but I'm asked to wait a moment. Hi, how can I help you? Just wanted to tell you, are you looking for Omnivest, gold, trading? Gold, trading? Gold, gold.
This time a woman with dark brown eyes answers the door wearing a hijab. She doesn't really give it a chance to see in, keeping the door slightly ajar.
I'm so close to getting a good look inside the office where Alphalassie's money laundering operation was registered. The woman politely tells me that Omnivest Gold Trading isn't here.
As she says, the current business is completely different, another activity, another company. Thank you so much. You're most welcome. Thank you, very grateful. I feel deflated and desperate to know more about Abdullah Al-Filassi and what he was doing with the money that was being laundered out here in Dubai. Was Omnivest Gold physically once here behind that door?
Were the people in the office? Or did Al-Falasy simply rent it so he had an address for his documents? And that £100 million plus of criminal money, much of it from the cocaine trade, where did it go? It feels like it's dissolved into thin air. But it's time to leave Dubai and head back to the UK. I've got a flight to catch and have exhausted all my leads. For now.
Are you ready to get an inside look at crime from someone who has investigated some of Australia's worst crimes? It was like Aladdin's cave. The luminol found bloodied footprints and bloodied handprints on a wall. So it's just like a horror movie. Former homicide detective Gary Jubiland sits down with cops, crims, addicts, victims, small-time cheats and big-town lawyers...
as they tell their incredible stories. My house got raided. Next thing you know, I got bail refused. Next thing you know, I'm on a truck to Park Lane Prison. Listen to I Catch Killers early and ad-free on Crymax Plus on Apple Podcasts today or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. Oh, hi, David. How are you doing? I'm all right. Yeah, not bad. Back home in Manchester, I call Fiona, my colleague on this investigation.
Obviously, you know, we've been looking at this Sunshine and Lollipops, Cashmules gang, the National Crime Agency. I want to show her something because I have a fresh lead on Abdullal Falassi.
A former colleague of ours, John Simpson, who used to be a crime correspondent at The Times, had gotten hold of some documents, which he was happy to share. I've sent you an email. Can you see the one? It's a PDF, Omnivest Gold Trading, LLC. Yeah, I'm just opening that up.
The documents we're looking at give me much more information about Abdullah Al-Falassi. If you just go into the second PDF on that email. What one of them shows is all the companies that he was involved in, not just Omnivest Gold Trading. He had stakes in a whole load of organisations, most of them listed as a director or general manager.
Gosh, there's a really long list, isn't there? It's huge. Flower companies, food companies. Yeah. Real estate. Yeah. Wow. A marble and ceramic trading company. Oh, gosh, the list goes on and on and on, doesn't it? I mean, there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple of dozen companies here, is there? The scope is huge. I don't quite know what to make of it all.
I mean, this is one thing that I don't even think the NCA are aware of the extent of, you know, how many companies and how diverse it was. It really is. There's something else I was going to show you as well, which I think you'll be interested in. Yeah. Just on that original email where the PDFs were, if you click on, do you see the first link? Mm-hmm.
We're looking at a website that showed Al-Falassi's reach went far beyond the UK and the UAE. Because it doesn't stop in Dubai. They actually stretch to West Africa as well. Oh, yeah. I wasn't expecting that. That's really interesting. The website is for a company called Atlantic Holdings. The site is no longer available online, but this is an archived version of it.
Atlantic Holdings is based in Ghana. Oh, I see. You're in Ghana now. So now we're in Ghana. And it was the parent company of Omnivest Gold Trading, the company Al-Falassi used to give cover to his cash mules. So what we can see here is that in July 16th, 2019...
Omnivest Gold Trading LLC was part of Atlantic Holdings and on its website it says, Omnivest Gold Trading LLC is our trading arm in Dubai, specialising in gold and rough diamond trading. We import raw gold, refine and sell to financial institutions within the UAE. Oh, wow. So what does this all mean?
Basically, from what this website is saying, Alphalassie's company, Omnivest Gold Trading, was the Dubai arm of a business based in Ghana, West Africa. Right, get this, Fiona. Omnivest is also a member of the UAE Kimberley Process Certification Scheme. That is a global initiative for stemming the trade in conflict diamonds and promoting peace and security.
And yet we know this same company that claims to have this certificate from this scheme is basically being used as a cover for organised crime. It's just extraordinary, isn't it? It's incredible. I think it's worth repeating this.
According to this website, the company, Omnivest Gold Trading, was allegedly part of a global initiative to promote peace and security around conflict diamonds. If true, the audacity of this does amaze me. Al-Falassi was using Omnivest Gold as a front for organised crime. I've contacted the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, asking if they had any comment on this, but they didn't respond.
We now know that Al Falassi owned a whole host of businesses. We also know that Omnivest Gold was part of that parent company, Atlantic Holdings. But who was Al Falassi? We know he's an Emirati whose wife's family owned property in London and previous to this had no criminal record but the website revealed new information about his past and also something more about his business.
If you click about us and scroll down, it says our board members. And there's three of them on there. And one of them, he looks a lot younger than his police mugshot. And he's kind of wearing his Emirati white robes and headdress. Yeah. But that is Abdullah Al-Falassi. What we're looking at is the three board members on the Atlantic Holdings website back in 2020.
And there he is. Abdullah Al-Falassi is on the board. He's not just a director of Omnivest Gold Trading, but sits on the board of the wider umbrella organisation. Interestingly, he goes by the name Abdullah bin Bayat. His full name is Abdullah Mohammed Ali bin Bayat Al-Falassi. He just hasn't actually said Al-Falassi on there, but it's clearly him. It's clearly him.
I like some of these details that he holds an MSc from the Dubai Police College. Yeah. And there it mentions Omnivest directly. Today I'm going to take you on a trip around Dubai. Picture this, yoga at the highest 360 infinity pool in the world. In recent years, Dubai has become a holiday destination. The UAE has targeted tourists with adverts like the ones I'm watching now.
A city that redefines the luxury experience. We're talking about fine dining, breathtaking views from the sky, yacht cruises in the Raven Sea and of course vintage rides that have you looking like a movie star. But as I'm finding out, behind this veneer, the place of fun, sun and affordable decadence, if you look for it, there's an uneasy tension.
In February this year, the global watchdog that looks at how countries deal with money laundering took the UAE off its grey list. That's the list of countries under increased monitoring for how they're dealing with things like money laundering and terrorist financing. While working on this series, I contacted the UAE authorities and asked them about Omnivest Gold and Abdullah Al-Filassi.
Here's part of their response, read by one of the producers on this show. In February this year, the Financial Action Task Force, the global standard setter for measures to fight money laundering, praised the UAE's significant progress. The UAE is committed to continuing these efforts and actions more than ever today and over the longer term. Back to Al-Falassi, Omnivest Gold and Atlantic Holdings.
Now, we know that Abdullah Al-Filassi went to jail in 2022 for being the ringleader of the Sunshine and Lollipops money laundering operation. We also know that the website for Atlantic Holdings is no longer active and there is no sign of Omnivest Gold trading anymore. But I came across another website with a very similar name. It's called Atlantic Trust Holding.
Yeah, I'm just looking through this one now. So the interesting thing about this company, which is still active, is that it shares a lot of the same companies that Atlantic Holdings had. Wow. I wanted to know more about this and if this company has any connection to Alpha Lassie, who's currently in prison in the UK. So I contacted Atlantic Trust Holding and asked them. Their chairman sent me a response, part of which is read here by a producer.
Atlantic Trust Holding has been in existence for close to 20 years now and had no dealings with Atlantic Holdings of Dubai. The website for Atlantic Holdings of Dubai was controlled by Al-Falassi and his business partner. We had nothing to do with any of his activities. As a matter of fact, I have had no contact with Abdullah for some eight years now. We know nothing about his activities.
If anything at all, I would be someone to be jubilant because Abdullah used his influence to literally bully people. So that's it then. That trail ends there. I still don't know exactly what Al-Falassi did with the £110 million that was smuggled into Dubai using his signature and omnivest gold as a cover. But I have managed to find out more about his various business interests in the UAE than has ever been known before.
This tangled web has shown me how international drugs gangs can launder their money. Following the web of companies laid out in these documents shows me just how complex and multinational the modern-day cocaine business has become.
We followed the raw material from the fields where it's grown to the ports and tunnels where it's exported out of South America to Europe at the massive distribution hub in Rotterdam to the UK and then Dubai. At every stage a different criminal group has been involved in that part of the business.
And then from here, the money trail is suddenly split and leads into different countries and different businesses, to gold, to mining. The National Crime Agency has also told me that an alleged Sunshine and Lollipops gang member was found with gold bars in Tanzania. I've also heard via a source that Al Falassi was in contact with people in the Netherlands and Hong Kong.
While Al-Falassi is now behind bars, we know the profits from the cocaine trade are at a record high with money laundering widespread. And I've got no doubt that there's more people like Al-Falassi willing to do the same. Fiona and I finish off our chat.
I don't think I've ever seen an illustration quite so clear, step by step, of kind of from the UK, coat trade, through cash money, through to Dubai. Then we have this purchase of gold in Tanzania and Africa. It's like a full circle, isn't it, almost? It just shows, doesn't it, how this is obviously a very fruitful area for the type of people that we're looking into to legitimise money and put it into other ventures and
far away from where the drug dealing is originally going on that you've been sort of exposing in this podcast. Yeah, absolutely. So is that the end of our trail? Well, no, not quite. So this is it. This is the end of the line. Because my other colleague on this investigation, Stephen Drill, has arrived home after visiting the coca fields in Colombia and the narco tunnels in Mexico earlier in this series.
And while we thought the money trail had disappeared into this web of overseas investments and corporate records, Stephen was just about to pick that trail up, running right past his front door. Hi, my name's Stephen Drill, I'm a journalist. I just wanted to touch base, are you the owner of the property? I was just wondering if the place has been seized by the police or what's happening with it now?
That's next time in the final episode of Cocaine Inc. Cocaine Inc. is a joint investigation from The Times, The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins, Stephen Drill and me, Fiona Hamilton. Additional reporting on this episode from John Simpson at The News Movement. The series is produced by Sam Chantarassack.
The executive producers are Will Rowe and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by Jasper Leake, with original music by Tom Birchall. Special thanks on this episode to our security team, Chris Kemp and Pete Emerson-Thomas. And if you want to get in touch with any questions or thoughts on the series, email cocaineinc at thetimes.co.uk.
The podcast Faith on Trial looks into Hillsong, both in Australia and the U.S., and takes both the listener and hosts on unexpected twists and turns in the story of Brian Houston and the singing preachers. There are two incidents involving Pastor Brian. The Australian journalists uncovered a litany of alleged criminal behavior in the megachurch. Financial gifts were being given to the leaders of the church. Listen to Faith on Trial.
on Apple Podcasts today or wherever you get your podcasts.
