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Ex-police officer warns of 'hundreds of millions of pounds of money laundering' in Britain after police raid
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Apr 11, 2025
A former Police Officer has hit out at the state of "lawless Britain" as the National Crime Agency exposed their latest money laundering raid - targeting barber shops and vape shops.Operation Machinize saw 265 premises visited by police in a money laundering crackdown - seizing more than £40,000 in cash, 200,000 cigarettes, 7,000 packs of tobacco, over 8,000 illegal vapes and two vehicles.FULL STORY HERE.
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Hundreds of barbershops are being targeted in a nationwide money laundering sting
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Yes, Operation Machinise. I don't think that's how you... Machinise? Machinise. Seize the National..
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I don't know why I made it Italian. Seize the National Crime Agency target high street crime
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where gangs take advantage of cash-reliant businesses. Now, this is going on everywhere, isn't it
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Oh, it certainly is. I think just about every town in the country has seen some sort of new barbershop or vape shop
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that never seems to have anyone in it. No, no-one buying your vapes. Lush with cash
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Well, Norman Brennan, I believe, has been on a few raids like this, retired police officer and director of the Law & Order Foundation
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Norman, are the police only just clocking on to this? Or, you know, behind the scenes
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do you reckon they've been looking into this more? Yeah, good afternoon, Tom and Emily
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I'll be quite honest with you, I haven't really been on too many of these, but I've obviously been following them
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I'm also aware from my own area, the London Borough of Richmond
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I've never seen so many barbershops open in the 46 years I've lived on this borough
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In fact, I think we've got more barbershops now than coffee shops
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At least when I drive past the coffee shops, I see people in them. When I drive past barbershops, predominantly they're empty
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I think what a number of these shops, and not all of them, it's a bit like going into a laundrette
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You take your dirty money in, you put it through the washer, and it comes out clean through what apparently is deemed
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as a legitimate business. And I'm sure this runs into hundreds of millions of pounds of money laundering
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I mean, it is extraordinary to see just how prolific these sorts of presumed money laundering operations have become
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Why is it, if the police are sort of onto this or sort of if they're at least going after it now
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why is it that they been allowed to proliferate quite so prodigiously It because Britain is lawless we have basically sleepwalked into a state of anarchy There are no police officers to police Yesterday you rightly covered the alleged 13
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new police officers, where they're not new police officers. 5,000 are special constables that work
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for free, four hours a week. 5,000 are PCSOs, we're getting rid of them. And 3,000 police officers
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being redeployed. So these criminals know that the police cannot cope and they're taking advantage
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of it. And many gangs actually fly into the country, as Tamara Eckerton and Frank Lampard
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found out to their cost, and they lost over 26 to 30 million pounds in four days. The gang came in
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and they were out. Norman, as well, I don't understand how this happens to begin with in
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terms of being able to open up a shop. Presumably you have to demonstrate your finances in one way
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or another, your address or your personal information and everything else and how you're
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going to run the business or whatever. There must be, you know, the council must have to take this stuff. The HMRC must have to take this stuff. And yet still they're able to
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set up and proliferate. I don't quite understand where the gaps are here
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Well, they probably send people over or people are in Britain that are law abiding members
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that are public, part of their families or known as their gang. So they keep quite clean
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They've got a clear record. And then, of course, they're funding, funded
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And if anybody asks any questions, they say their family are setting them up in business
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And before you know it, not all of them, but sadly, too many, including nail bars as well
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And even these car washes are actually criminal gangs, fleecing, not necessarily fleecing anyone
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But what they do is they don't charge too much. And you think that's a good result
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But behind the scenes, hundreds of thousands of dirty money is being cleaned and put back into the system
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often to go towards drugs and other criminality. Oh, it's lovely this is happening on all of our high streets, really, isn't it
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