>Qaiser spent the proceeds of his criminal activity on stays in high-end hotels, prostitutes, gambling, drugs and luxury items including a £5,000 Rolex watch.
... and he probably wasted the rest ...
WC Fields' quote:
“I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted.”
Recovery of criminal proceeds is regulated in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. There are certain instruments to recover illegal proceeds, either by restraint ("freeze") and/or confiscation orders. There is also a civil procedure possible, e.g. for assets that have been bought with criminal proceeds.
If a legal system were to allow a criminal his proceeds you effectively make property rights useless. Because why should I pay for a transaction if I could simply force you to do it and pay nothing in exchange.
There's been a few recent cases reported in our local UK paper where drug gangs are reported to have made £500k, say, and instructed to pay back £50k. They get a 2 or 3 years inside, rent free, then.
Given median wages it seems like they're getting a reasonable return provided they don't mind the stay in prison. Like would you go to prison if you were paid £70k a year to do so?
This sounds so far fetched that you should really cite the local UK paper and article if you make a comment like this.
It's got all the hallmarks something made up to incite anger and opinion. A believable yet outragious "fact" from a newspaper followed by a conclusion that any reasonable person would make. This gives the "fact" more credibility because of how we rationalize things.
I'm not prepared to dox myself for this, so ... whenever I see a drug story where they state numbers I calculate the yearly 'wage' they're getting for their prison sentence and often it's more than £30k. AFAICT they're getting much more, because they often get out early.
First from the list in my local paper for "drug gang 'ordered to repay'" (censored):
>A Proceeds of Crime Act hearing was told K and E had benefitted to the tune of £55k each.
>The pair appeared in $place Crown Court from custody and were told by Judge $judge to repay <£1k ea. within 30 days or face an extra 7 days in prison.
>$Y members of the gang who made nearly £200,000 were forced to hand over just over <<£10k between them. //
The next story is headlined about paying back £6k from £180k taking; these are both stories from the last 6 months.
The drugs in the stories are mostly cocaine and heroin in my UK location.
That is indeed strange. But one must always keep in mind that the media often gets the law wrong - whether it is the specific crime they were indicted for or the reasoning for a judgement. But, I cannot tell here. It just seems strange.
My naive read is that $500k is an estimate of their profit over X time period, likely based on the $50k restitution over Y time period, which is the conduct they’re actually charged for.
The reason for the discrepancy is simple: the government can only relcaim money connected to what they indict you for — not all the crimes people suspect, but can’t prove; in contrast, a newspaper is free to speculate “Well, if a month long sting caught them doing $50k, then they did like $500k/yr!”
You can get similar estimates if the government catches them with unsold drugs, and the paper reports how much money they would have made selling it. Again, a reasonable estimate of their cash flow, but sensible the police seize the drugs rather than money they haven’t earned yet. (And can’t seize past money, if not connected to a crime.)
I don’t have specific citations, but I’ve seen both in local papers over the years.
In Britain, you actually can. This is a result of the "criminal lifestyle" provisions; once the government has proved that you've made money from an ongoing course of criminal activity you then need to specifically show that your assets were legally acquired, or they're subject to forfeiture.
I do not know the right term for this, what if they try to cycle it once more through a legit transaction, like they release an music album on Amazon, and use the proceeds of the crime to buy 1000s of numbers of it, or some variation of such a scheme, then is the gains from the albums sales legit earnings or not?
Money Laundering, usually refers to activities where the illegal cash is mixed in with legit cash flow, especially with help from a cash intensive business like a car wash or a salon, but in the scheme I mentioned about, the second leg of the scheme, of buying albums, etc, there is nothing illegal about the transaction itself, only that the proceeds used for it was obtained through non-legit means.
In your example, the illegal cash is mixed in with legit album sales. Whether you actually buy your own album or simply claim that extra albums were sold is besides the point. Buying an album isn't illegal, but concealing the origin of illegally obtained funds by passing them through a legitimate business is. Driving a car isn't illegal, but running a red light is; the fact that you were legally driving a car doesn't mean you aren't breaking another law in the process. The fact that you are legally buying an album doesn't mean you aren't money laundering in the process.
Money laundering is actually also covered in the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, Part 7. It is defined in the most abstract term possible. That is done in order to make the example you provided an offense as well:
"A person commits an offence if he enters into or becomes concerned in an arrangement which he knows or suspects facilitates (by whatever means) the acquisition, retention, use or control of criminal property by or on behalf of another person."
