Crime group members jailed after smuggling almost £30 million in cash to Dubai

Members of a crime group that smuggled almost £30 million in cash from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates have been sentenced.

A National Crime Agency investigation found that the group worked with a British organiser based in Dubai to move the money on Emirates flights bound for Dubai. The flights left Manchester, Birmingham and Brussels airports between December 2017 and November 2019. The organiser, who is awaiting extradition to the United Kingdom and cannot be named for legal reasons, told associates to collect cash from organised crime groups and fly it out without declaring it on departure, as the law requires.

Couriers carried the cash in as many as five suitcases at a time, sometimes with help from Emma Rauf, a corrupt Emirates check in attendant at Manchester Airport. Rauf, 34, from Wilmslow in Cheshire, and her brother Ben Royle, 32, from London, were both involved in the arrangement. Rauf, whose maiden name is Royle, changed her plea to guilty on 23 March after first denying that she had entered into or become concerned in a money laundering arrangement to remove cash from the United Kingdom to Dubai.