To think this sounds like money laundering?

[Beetleback]

There’s a takeaway shop on our high street that is constantly being refurbished. It occasionally opens for a few weeks or months, then closes again for a long, elaborate refurbishment. This has happened maybe four times in the last few years.

There’s a lot of muttering locally about money laundering, but I really don’t understand how that would work? Can anyone explain it to me?

The machine costs money to run but yes I think it might be tax related, I have started to balance transfer because I rarely have cash on me and I forget to go to an ATM she's quiet happy with that.

They don't have the resources and it's not a priority compared to other types of crime. Sometimes they turn a blind eye too because they're monitoring the operation in the hope of catching the more senior people. There's not much point shutting down a nail bar which will just pop up again in a different incarnation and not tackling the criminality at the heart of it,

Quite not quiet 🙄

And because senior people in public life are often on the payroll of the gangs. Organized crime is simply impossible conduct without having police on the payroll.

Absolutely often in local councils they will be in a role which helps them grease the wheels.

See I can understand this - claiming revenue that you haven’t actually received because that’s an explanation for where the money has come from. Whether it’s open and you’re claiming more trade than you actually received, or it is closed but you’re submitting accounts that suggest it was open.

I still don’t really understand the benefit in constantly renovating?

I guess you get a mate to act as “contractor” and write up a load of fake/overinflated invoices for the work?

But you haven’t explained where all the money came from to pay for the work?

Or is the idea to “spend” all the money that you “made” when the shop was open, so you have a high turnover but no profit?

Not a clue - I assume works like laundering in that you use money made from nefarious purposes and legitimise it by using it to “pay” for refurbishment

@Beetleback The money will likely have come from selling drugs. Could be other stuff but predominately cash based money laundering is related to the drugs trade.

OP, are you in SE London/Kent by any chance?

More than likely but as long as the food is decent between closing and reopening I don't give it much head space.

Austerity, innit? There's pretty much no-one to enforce any kind of laws in the UK these days. My small town has three of these takeaways that keep closing and reopening. We have gone from zero to 4 Turkish barbers in a year. There's a car sales place near me that hardly ever seems to sell a car - and several of the more unusual ones they have "sold" have reappeared for sale very soon, sometimes multiple times. The owner always has some £100K+ car with illegal plates and illegal window tints.

I’m convinced a sweet shop which opened near me last year is money laundering. We have several branded sweet factories near me and you can go Into their shop and buy sweets cheaper. Why on earth would someone set up another sweet shop trying to compete with that. Plus we have supermarkets selling sweets cheaper than this shop can.

Which one is a matter of some local debate…

We have a money laundering sweet shop too. Amazing how a unit in prime position in a shopping centre survives when I never see a customer in it.

Wherever the money comes from, I still don’t completely understand how spending it on elaborately refurbishing a takeaway shop helps.

I get the idea of falsifying takings to explain where the money has (supposedly) come from, and of falsifying expenditure. But surely everything actually spent on marble tiles and the like is just frittering the money away?

You have to think about money laundering like any other business. You don't make 100% profit, you have costs and need to make investments. But if you have, say, £100,000 in cash from drug sales that needs to be deposited, you might be willing to sacrifice £30k of that in legitimate spending and just end making a profit of £70k in order to avoid getting caught by the police or having your accounts frozen by your bank (both of which would be more likely to happen if you just tried to deposits £100k in your bank account with no 'story')

Money laundering, people in bondage, sex slaves...It is happening all over the UK and nobody gives a fuck!

If you did you would get out there and report it or, at the very least, not support any of these businesses. How do you think these businesses can continue to trade whilst others go to the wall? Really?

Most of Leicester is like this, whole streets of various food offerings that are constantly being refurbed but rarely open. How many dessert bars does one high street need?! It’s not even subtle.
DH works in financial crime for a bank, it’s fascinating. It’s just like it is in Ozarks only a bit less exciting.

It's sad that it's come to this...criminals in charge and nobody cares.

Did you not watch Ozark?
So your heroin dealer makes £5k a week. But he can't buy a house, or even rent a decent one, neither can his partner. It's worth writing off £500 a week to make himself and her look legit. You start off spending 40% of what you take, but over time that will drop to around 20%. But you are making enough to write it off. Sometimes a extra income comes from what you are setting up.

There us no point in reporting it. The police know, the local council know. Everybody knows.

Depending on where you live, some of the barber/hair thing is cultural - there are loads around me too, and people basically hang out in them drinking and chatting all night, more like a cheap pub than a hairdresser. Fuck knows what their business model is, but they really are full every evening until about 10pm, and at least some of the customers are genuinely getting their hair cut as far as I can see through the windows. Doesn’t mean they aren’t also laundering money, but people do use them, they aren’t fake businesses.

The car washes and nail bars are all modern slavery, I grant you.

I care - but I am powerless to do anything. My MP and local Police really could not give less of a fuck if they tried, and the council are even worse.
Without them there's no hope of change.
I am sure large parts of all our local cities are run by organised crime, and no-one in authority is even slightly interested.