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A gun seized in the raid |
Five million pounds from safe deposit box raid still unclaimed
DETECTIVES said on Tuesday that five million pounds remain unclaimed nearly a year after police broke open thousands of safe deposit boxes in a raid on a Hampstead depository.
The store has been linked with drugs, guns and money laundering.
But anyone seeking to claim a slice of the fortune could find themselves joining more than 1,000 cases being investigated in an organised crime crackdown.
More than £35million – as well as pistols, child pornography, class A drugs and passports – were found when armed police raided the Hampstead Safe Depository in Finchley Road and two other linked vaults in Edgware and Park Lane in June last year.
Despite restoring the contents of 2,457 safe deposit boxes to their owners, a team of 60 detectives are still investigating 1,068 boxes.
The officer in charge of the case, Detective Chief Inspector Mark Ponting, said: “We believe that this operation has simultaneously impacted upon a number of criminal networks in London, nationally and globally.”
He refused to comment on the six suitcases found in the vaults that were reportedly filled with gold dust, but confirmed that for every depositor who has yet to have their possessions restored, “there is an investigation of some form or another”.
Among the many untold stories revealed by the Hampstead raid were a plastic bag containing a hammer, chisel and pipe wrench, all wrapped in a cloth. No one has accessed the box for 10 years.
The vaults’ owners, Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, was set up in 1983 by Hampstead couple Leslie Sieff, 60, and Jacqueline Swann, 44, later joined as directors by Milton Woolf, 53.
All three were arrested on suspicion of money laundering and are on police bail.
The Hampstead Safe Depository, which was guarded by armed police for days after the raid, is the only one of the raided vaults to have reopened. Eleven people have been charged as a result of the raids. |
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