Operation Rize - The Inside Story On The Met's Biggest-Ever Sting Doing 6 thousand odd strong boxes on bulk warrants means finding a judge who is senile, believes policemen or fairy stories, goes in for funny handshakes, whatever. It has nothing to do with justice. They would probably claim that it is not a gross procedural abuse. The fact that they found contraband in few boxes does not excuse the rest.
Giving millions to the taxman is another abuse of power. It might reasonably be thought in breach of Theft Act 1968. Of course that does not mean that the users were not criminals. Lots of them are Jews which is highly suggestive.
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No 3 Park Street is an innocuous black door behind The Dorchester hotel. No safety deposit centre likes to advertise itself to thieves. Only it wasn't burglars who broke into the three branches of the Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, in Mayfair, Edgware and Hampstead, at 3pm on 2 June 2008, but Metropolitan Police officers carrying out simultaneous armed raids........................The 6,717 boxes took 11 days to empty, each Safe Deposit premises being turned into a makeshift evidence room as officers, with diamond-tipped drills and angle-grinders, broke into every box. Half were empty, but 3,554 boxes were found to contain, as well as cash and jewellery, stashes of child pornography, false passports, gold, pure cocaine, ivory, firearms, and guns subsequently linked to murders. Operation Rize has been hailed as a great coup. 'The sheer volume of money concerned - £53 million in cash, of which £12.5 million so far has been subsequently seized by the courts,' was the first response from Detective Chief Inspector (now Superintendent) Mark Ponting of Scotland Yard, when asked what he thought made Rize so successful...........
Legally, the warrant appears somewhat dubious - the police only had three warrants to search 6,717 boxes and each one was an individual's private, leased property. 'I can't understand why they didn't just get a warrant for the boxes they wanted to open,' says a former employee at the Safe Deposit Centres. 'We've always given them access with a warrant before. It's like knocking off an entire block of flats just because you've got a burglar living in one flat.' 'It was a fishing expedition,' says another lawyer. 'And the police in this country are specifically forbidden to do that.'
The Met had to go 'judge-shopping' to find one who'd grant the warrants, as the original application was rejected by Southwark Crown Court, the Met's normal court. Every lawyer ES spoke to was keen to reiterate how unusual this is. The Met turned to Judge Kenneth Macrae, of Croydon, now retired. Statistical information, the Met told him, suggested that 90 per cent of the boxes would be linked to crime.
In fact, even if the other 250 pending cases result in convictions, that still only brings the conviction rate to 10 per cent. Unsurprisingly, the seizure of the boxes has been challenged. There were two judicial reviews of Operation Rize: one by the law firm Lewis Nedas on behalf of its clients; the other on behalf of a Russian businessman, Alexander Temerko [ Jew(?), wanted for fraud, English judge snubs Russia's 'political' extradition request ], who had fled Russia because his former boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky [ Jew, thief, in prison ], head of Yukos Oil and once Russia's richest man, had been jailed by Putin for eight years. In both cases, the police settled and returned the property before the judicial reviews finished going through the courts. 'They didn't want their warrants being questioned,' says one of the lawyers.
Most of the safe deposit customers have had to deal with, at best, endless bureaucracy: finding receipts for inherited jewellery and justifying cash. One family had to get its diamonds analyzed to prove that they had been cut before 1939. 'The police wanted them to prove their story that they'd been smuggled out of Germany. It cost a great deal of money,' explains Mark Richards, also with Appleton Richardson & Co.
In many cases, once the police had admitted the loot was not the proceeds of crime, they handed it over to the Inland Revenue. 'The second phase was all about money going to the Revenue. They were begging us to get our clients to let them keep the money and set it off against tax,' says Egan. 'We said if they wanted a loan, they could pay us five per cent. The Revenue opened an account so that clients could transfer money from their box directly to the Revenue. Sometimes the Met got heavy and said that if our clients didn't hand over the money they would prosecute.' In many cases, the Revenue is keeping the money on the grounds not only that tax is due on it, but also that the cash's owners must have been dodging taxes for years. 'They were told they'd just been unlucky getting caught this time,' says a lawyer. '£13 million has been returned to the public purse,' says Ponting. When contacted, the Revenue refused to comment. However, it denied that its officers were on a percentage incentive scheme for cash collection, although it did admit that successful officers get bonuses.
At worst, the cases deteriorated into serious intimidation. One man, an estate agent who does not wish to be named, was arrested after the police discovered £141,000 in cash in his box: it had been given to him on his wedding day by his great-aunt, who had escaped Germany in 1940 with diamonds sewn into her clothes. She converted the money into cash in the UK. 'It was the family running-away fund; she gave it to me as I was the eldest son. I never thought of it as my money. It just sat in the box. After what happened to the Jewish people, my grandfather told me to save it for a rainy day,' he says.
The police, however, arrested his brother-in-law, who was also his business partner. They raided his home, threatened to arrest his wife and forbade his brother-in-law to speak to him. 'They tried to say I had been ripping off home-owners,' he says. 'They couldn't understand why the money wasn't in a bank account.' The police failed to make any allowances for the fact that the raids happened at the height of the financial crisis: the banking system was going into meltdown, interest rates were below one per cent. Northern Rock had collapsed the previous year, and Bradford & Bingley was on the point of bankruptcy. After two years, the police - finally admitting his money wasn't the proceeds of crime - promptly handed it over to the Revenue, but £1,200 was missing. 'The Revenue wrote to say it had received £139,800.20. I had all these documents from the police saying £141,000. I rang them to ask what was going on, and they said that they had never checked the money.' He's yet to get his cash back from the Revenue, which is now interested in whether his great- aunt paid duty on the diamonds she saved from the Nazis.
Another Jewish depositor described how a 'large gold cocktail ring and a baby's bracelet' had been missing when her property was returned to her, as well as £8,000 in cash. But when the police showed her a film to prove their innocence, she says, the tape was doctored: 'The film was cut, and then was taken from another camera angle, and the time code was missing on the second tape.' Another North London goldsmith claims that £10,000 and his wife's diamond earrings were missing. 'None of the complaints have ever been upheld,' says Ponting.
Nor have any of those who have received their property back ever been offered compensation for legal and accountancy fees. 'They can make claims through the courts. It's catered for in legislation,' says Ponting. Yet neither their lawyers nor the box owners seem aware of this. As of last month, the three directors of Safe Deposit Centres Ltd have been sentenced, yet the firearm that Woolf was also convicted of possessing was in one of the boxes, rather than his own. The counterfeit $60,000 Sieff was convicted of holding was the result of a crime perpetrated against him in 1996. A client changed the money at their bureau de change and when Sieff dis-covered it was fake, he put it into the company safe deposit box and left it there.
Ponting claims the police had identified the company as 'a criminal enabler', yet the results belie that, with only 0.5 per cent of the boxes being so far linked to crime. Many of the lawyers and accountants involved seem to think that Rize was just a revenue-raising operation. 'The minutes of Operation Rize look like a business meeting,' says one.
There are those who claim Rize must have made a loss, with all the officers and overtime, but Ponting says the cost so far is only £10 million, including the investigations that have arisen from Rize: 'A huge amount of money we confiscated was linked to tax evasion,' he says. Interestingly, the Met is allowed to keep between 18 per cent and 50 per cent of the cash it seizes, depending on the circumstances. 'It's how the Met are going to pay for the policing of the Olympics,' claims another lawyer. ES
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Set a thief to catch a thief. A lot of the victims are Jews so believe their stories if you want. The crooks who robbed them are just that.
Policeman Perverts The Truth
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Asked whether the scale of the operation was worthwhile, Detective Superintendent Mark Ponting said the fact more than £50 million should be returned to public coffers showed it had been a 'sound investment'. 'Rize was an innovative money laundering investigation targeting those who offered a service to organized crime, and in doing so has taken the proceeds of crime away from criminals and put cash back in the public,’ he said.
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"Money being returned to the public coffers" is the lie direct. Or, just possibly the man doesn't understand English. Given his rank it has to be the case that his words in court have been used to put men in prison. Believe a police man? Not me, not ever.
The raid that rocked the Met: Why gun and drugs op on 6717 safety ...
Jews Go To Prison For Helping Criminals
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TWO company directors who let crime gangs stash guns and drugs in lock-up safes in Hampstead have been jailed.Milton Woolf [ How a synagogue leader helped gangs stash millions ], 55, from Golders Green and Jacqueline Swan [ Not a proven Jew but it is highly likely- Editor ], 47, from Barnet, concealed weapons and drugs, along with other criminal proceeds in depositories run by their company Safe Deposits Centres Limited.
They were sentenced to a combined total of five and half years at Southwark Crown Court, along with former director Leslie Sieff [ How a synagogue leader helped gangs stash millions ], 63, from Fortune Green, after admitting offences including money laundering and possession of a firearm. The case followed a massive police operation in 2009, codenamed “Rize”, in which more than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands of safes in Finchley Road, Park Lane and Edgware.
The investigation found staff were complicit in helping criminals store their booty and charged them thousands of pounds, in what they had built up into the biggest safe deposit firm in Britain.
Speaking after Monday’s sentencing, Det Supt Mark Ponting from the Met’s economic and specialist crime unit, said: “Rize was an innovative money laundering investigation targeting those who offered a service to organized crime, and in so doing has taken the proceeds of crime away from criminals and put cash back into the public purse.
“The Met remains determined to tackle serious and organized crime at all levels – and that includes those who act more subtly in the background but who are often the key facilitators for those who commit serious crime.”
Officers seized contents from 3,497 boxes following the raids in June 2009. They unearthed items including fake passports, child pornography and crack cocaine as well as £56million in cash.
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This article is clearer about the perpetrators and the perpetratees. Just how did the Jews come by the money? Fair means or foul? The latter like as not.
8. BBC News - Safety deposit pair who held millions for gangs jailed
"7 Mar 2011 ... Milton Woolf, 55, from St John's Wood, north-west London, pleaded guilty to charges relating to Operation Rize. ..."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-12645075
Stormfront Takes A Position
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Stormfront is never going to take a Jew's story at face value even if he does not know that it was crime.