Money laundering shops why no action?

[NoisySnail]

Where I live there are a number of shops that are very obvious money laundering fronts. For example a dessert place that is hardly ever open, has no menu or prices, and when it is open has one scary looking man behind the counter and motorbikes going inside and leaving with a package.
Or the takeaway that has never been open in three years. Or the shop with very limited opening hours that has hardly anything to sell - just some pop and chocolate bars.
I am not someone who knows anything about money laundering but I can spot these dodgy premises a mile away. So why does no one do anything about thus?

So it's a joke to you and you're happy to perpetuate it. Fine, but don't complain about others not doing anything. It's not legal to 'force' companies to take a certain form of payment, cash is still legal tender, so no, that isn't the solution.

Yes I think so. Non cash payments should be accepted

Maybe the council want the rents for the shops as they are so cash strapped

I'm sure the owners use public services such as healthcare so they need to contribute and be taxed properly.

I know that the authorities don't have resources to monitor everything, BUT, what I can't accept is that the staff on the ground aren't proactive.

Take two recent police raids on cannabis farms in our High Street. Police officers/(well mostly PCSO's) walk down that street many times per day.

For a few years there's been a smell of weed from two boarded up premises, one a closed down bank, the other a closed down Home Bargains shop. The smell was obvious.

About six months ago, the police raided the shop and found all three floors full of cannabis plants. They appealed on local news/media for the public to report suspicions. They were inundated by people reporting the same smell from the old bank across the road so raided that as well and found it was also full of cannabis plants.

Now you can't tell me that the officers/PCSOs who walked up and down that high street every day didn't notice the cannabis smell. Everyone else did.

Council workers, police officers, tax and other governmental agency workers presumably don't go around with their eyes closed, so why aren't they proactively reporting things?

If I worked for HMRC I'm not sure I'd fancy tackling a criminal empire either.

If Line of Duty is to be believed, the senior police officers getting the reports are probably also part of the criminal gangs

I absolutely believe that there is massive police corruption. I have personal experience of a sizeable investment fraud reported to police (City of London) and the reporter was told to shut up and go away, in an extremely threatening manner. The person who reported subsequently died, so it went no further.

Reading the thread we would probably agree that the vast majority of these slave labour/ money laundering fronts are operated by foreign nationals. It's mental when you think it's all going on in plain sight on the High Street and seemingly no one gives a fuck. More galling is the hoops you have to jump through at the bank on the same High Street if you want, say, to be added as a signatory to an account.

I think there's deliberate reluctance on the part of the authorities for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, these types of things don't directly affect politicians. They don't live in areas that are most affected, they don't mix with everyday people. So it's easier for them to just cover their eyes and pretend it's not happening.

Secondly, we've been fed a lie that everyone coming to the UK is either escaping a war zone, or is highly skilled and solvent "They want to work, they want to contribute" etc. A sizeable number will be just plain wrong'uns like you get everywhere. But for the political class to admit it would raise serious questions about the effects of mass migration on quality of life for those that already live here. And they won't go down that road, hence the obsession with just GDP figures.

Yes it's quite depressing.

The area where I live has changed so much and it used to be lovely.

Frequent renovation/refurb and selling the business, buying it back again, is classic money laundering. Completely different from a small family business with the same shop/staff running for years. Very easy to spot the difference. Restaurants are the perfect cover for money laundering in fairly upmarket areas. The phone shops work better in cheaper areas. All really obvious if you know what to look for.

All of these people can afford very clever accountants. It is much easier for HMRC to chase ordinary business owners who make a mistake, or file their tax returns a bit late.

It should be legal to force companies above a certain turnover to take cards as well as cash. I'm not saying they should be banned from taking cash, but they should be forced to offer card payments for the same cost to the customer. In 2024 when most places are fazing out cash because it's more trouble than it's worth, I really don't think this is an unreasonable expectation.

I agree. Not keen at all on banning cash, but now that the vast majority of sales are by card, it's time to make taking cards compulsory for all but the smallest of businesses. Maybe set the limit/threshold as being VAT registered traders, i.e. total annual sales of over £90k p.a. which nicely exempts the "lifestyle"/"hobby" style of businesses.

We really need to start taking actions to counter tax evasion and money laundering and restricting/reducing the use of cash has to be the starting point.

Would they take any notice though

They seem to be above the law

Yes the country you go to for nice gnashers, but also the country which regularly sends people home dead after their butt lift / gastric bypass surgeries.

Not being able to monitor each and every takeaway, barbers, cake shop etc is one thing but what about those MASSIVE sweet shops in the West End?

Private Eye, Evening Standard and no doubt others have been writing about them for years!

Cryptocurrency is the easiest way of evading tax. And I don't see any calls to ban shops that accept this.

So far as I know it is legal to have a crypto e wallet. It is only when it gets transferred to the individual's bank account it should be declared on a tax return. I am aware the Financial Conduct Authority is investigating the existence of crypto cash machines in Exeter Nottingham and Sheffield. Most likely because crypto is still in its infancy and is unregulated.

The world is still not ready to regulate cryptocurrency until the official bodies step in and sort this out.

Good luck getting druggies to buy their ten bags and Spice laced junk with crypto.

Drugs are a huge source of the cash for these places. Hence why they need a way to launder it.

I work for a local authority team alongside a team who conducts these investigations. There is a team of 5 people to cover a city with a population of over 600k.
Just to collect the evidence, prepare statements and a prosecution for one trial for illegal tobacco took a year.
Action is taken but underfunding and job cutting means councils simply lack the resources to tackle the amount of places that need investigating.

This story about illegal cigarettes is on the BBC today. It's everywhere.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy9097lwxg9o

Not my prettiest link but it does the job.

This has been going on in plain sight for decades. Car boot loads of illegal cigarettes used to be unloaded in the local hospital car park. The police knew perfectly well that it was happening. There was a police raid on local convenience stores at least 15 years ago - they were concealing guns packed in crates of fruit and veg. The shops selling vapes are also selling the drugs to put in them. Surely this isn't news to anyone?

That’s the basic premise, yes.

Ironically, it's the money laundering laws that have caused the massive increasing in hand car washes, turkish barbers, "dodgy" kebab and other takeaways. Previously the criminal gangs could just "wash" their money through numerous bank accounts, shell companies, offshore banks, etc and using false indentities. Now it's harder to do that, they need to launder the cash somewhere, so have taken over the "cash economy".

It's caught HMRC off guard since they've always been obsessed about tax evasion due to businesses not putting all sales through the books, so they're obsessed with looking at shops, takeaways etc that have low margins as they're looking for signs of sales not being put through the books. They've not been looking at businesses with high margins or unrealistically high sales, hence the explosion in money laundering shop fronts.

Car boot stands have always been tolerated as they're at a much smaller scale and, of course, only one day per week, whereas money laundering shop fronts are often 7 days, 12 hours per day, so can handle far higher sums of money.

The law is inadequate. The penalties are derisory. There aren't sufficient police funds to run a proper investigation.