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Get you up to speed: Post Offices being used by Russian gang kingpins to launder their dirty cash | News UK
The UK government has announced the hiring of 500 fraud investigators in a £500 million effort to combat money laundering at Post Offices and certain shops, amid concerns these locations are being exploited by organised crime groups to launder profits. The strategy was unveiled during a briefing at the National Crime Agency attended by Security Minister Dan Jarvis and Treasury Minister Lucy Rigby, who highlighted the urgent need to address vulnerabilities in the system.
The High Street Organised Crime Unit, established in May, has identified Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and Kent and Essex as primary regions for criminal cash circulation. The government reports that £350million has been recovered from criminals in the past year, contributing to a broader £500million initiative to combat money laundering at Post Offices and other high street venues.
The UK government has announced the hiring of 500 fraud investigators in a £500 million initiative to combat money laundering at Post Offices and other retail outlets, which have been identified as significant channels for illicit financial activities. Security Minister Dan Jarvis emphasised the need for a robust response, stating, “Kingpin figures… should understand there will be serious consequences for their criminality,” as efforts intensify to disrupt money laundering networks and enhance co-operation between law enforcement and financial institutions.
What remains unclear — The specific number of organised crime figures involved in the money laundering network targeting Post Offices has not been disclosed.
Post Offices identified as key sites for Russian money laundering activities
Five-hundred fraud-busters are to be hired in a £500million crackdown on money laundering at Post Offices and dodgy High Street shops.
They will hunt organised crime kingpins who use them to channel profits globally to countries such as Russia, the government says.
Post Offices have been identified as a ‘key vector’ for sending dirty money, and also linked to ‘hostile state actors’ operating here.
The warning came in a briefing to senior ministers – exclusively attended by WTX – about the dirty cash fuelling the UK’s drug trade and other criminal activity.
Since 2017, post office branches have been able to accept cash deposits on behalf of banks, but with less rigorous checks.
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This makes it easier for drug dealers and other criminals to pay in their profits, often by splitting large amounts into multiple smaller deposits and using different accounts.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis and Treasury Minister Lucy Rigby were told these weaknesses meant post offices posed a ‘major vulnerability’ in stopping criminal cash flowing through Britain’s high streets.
The pair were visiting the National Crime Agency (NCA) to unveil the government’s new Anti-Money Laundering and Asset Recovery Strategy.
The NCA has estimated at least £12billion criminal cash is generated and laundered in the UK each year.
Jarvis told WTX: ‘It’s important that people understand that the UK is being made into a much harder target.
‘Kingpin figures thinking they can come and wash their money in the way they’ve done previously in the UK, they should understand there will be serious consequences for their criminality.
‘Stay away from the United Kingdom because we will catch you, we will bring you to justice, and we will prevent you from carrying out your criminal activity.’
The High Street was described as a ‘key vector’ for these illicit laundered profits.
Barber shops were thought to be the hub of this criminal activity, but officers discovered that a wide range of stores from petrol stations to vape shops are involved.
The Post Office was also described in the briefing as a particular target for powerful money laundering networks, linked to hostile state actors, operating in the UK.
Officers have identified three hotspot regions where criminal cash is circulating on the high streets.
These are Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and the Kent and Essex counties.
Those areas are the main focus of the High Street Organised Crime Unit, which was launched in May to crack down on laundered cash.
Tackling dirty cash on the high street is just one part of the new government strategy to go after the kingpins behind the dirty money trade.
Ministers were also briefed about efforts to destabilise powerful Russian money laundering networks.
Officers have already arrested more than 100 drug couriers connected to large-scale investigations into these transnational groups.
The NCA is also setting up a Financial Intelligence Service to improve co-operation with banks, so that officers can better track laundered money moving around the UK.
These public-private partnerships – with a number of UK banks – will combine intelligence, data and expertise to help identify and stop bank accounts involved in moving suspicious funds.
Part of the funding for the new government strategy will come from £350million stripped from criminals in the past year.
The government says it stopped £1billion of dirty money being moved, disrupted 2,700 illicit finance operations and returned £26million to victims as laundering convictions hit 4,000.
And £1million was stripped from people smugglers and immigration offenders, depriving criminal gangs of funds to pay for more illegal crossings.
Rigby told WTX: ‘We know that money laundering funds some of the most serious crimes that we face in this country, from hostile state activity at one end through to fraud and people smuggling.
‘That’s exactly why we’ve wanted to do as much as we can to clamp down on it.’
Criminologist Prof Emmeline Taylor called the strategy ‘significant’, adding: ‘Following the money is essential if we are serious about disrupting organised crime.
‘If we want a High Street renaissance, we must prevent criminal economies from taking root and driving law-abiding citizens out of business.’
A Post Office spokesperson said: ‘Money laundering is a complex issue which affects organisations across the financial sector.
‘Post Office works closely with the banks and law enforcement agencies to identity suspicious activity and disrupt criminal behaviour.
‘We continue to invest in controls, training and partnerships across the industry so we can respond to evolving threats.’
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‘Cheer up, you caught the bad guy,’ says killer Virginia McCullough as she is arrested for murdering her parents
A woman who murdered her parents “in cold blood” before hiding them in makeshift tombs for four years told officers to “cheer up, you caught the bad guy” as she was arrested in her home.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, shortly afterwards in 2019.
She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions until she was finally caught in 2023.
In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed – and eerily calm – McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually.
“It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”
She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink then put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.
McCullough, having been arrested on suspicion of double murder, told an officer: “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
She added: “I know I don’t seem 100% evil.”
At the police station, she told officers where a kitchen knife was, which she described as a “murder weapon”, and a hammer which she said “will still have blood on it”.
McCullough, of Pump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday with a minimum term of 36 years at Chelmsford Crown Court, after she admitted to their murders between 17 and 20 June 2019 at an earlier hearing at the same court.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard how she hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks.
The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
But concerns over Mr and Mrs McCullough’s welfare were raised in September 2023 by a GP at their registered practice, and Essex County Council’s safeguarding team referred these to police.
The GP had not seen the couple for some time and said Mr McCullough had failed to collect medication and attend scheduled appointments. It was found McCullough had frequently cancelled appointments, using a range of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.
It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.
Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.
“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name.”
She added: “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
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Defense alliance NATO chief Mark Rutte has met US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss global security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson.
The meeting took place in Palm Beach, Florida.
During his first term as US president, 2017-2020, Trump pushed for European NATO countries to spend more on defense and described the alliance’s cost-sharing as unfair to the US.
Rutte took over as NATO chief from Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in November.
Before taking office in January, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth for the post of defense secretary, which has raised eyebrows among many allies.
Hegseth, 44, has served as an infantry captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no senior military or government officer experience.
Multiple missiles were fired in an airstrike towards a densely populated part of Lebanon’s capital early on Saturday.
The huge airstrike targeted Beirut’s Basta neighbourhood, and no prior warnings were given by the Israeli military. The largely residential area was struck last month.
At least one violent explosion was heard across the city, Reuters witnesses said, and plumes of smoke could be seen. Scenes of massive destruction at the site were shared online, including a massive crater in the ground.
“Beirut, the capital, woke up to a horrific massacre, as the Israeli enemy’s air force completely destroyed an eight-story residential building with five missiles on Al-Mamoun Street in Basta,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
The health ministry put the initial death toll at four, with 23 wounded. The number is expected to climb in the coming hours as search and rescue efforts continue.
It came after a long day of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have been non-stop since last week.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group escalated into a full-blown war in mid-September.
Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the eastern Beqaa region, and has sent ground troops across the border. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel.
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