June 25, 2024 • 39 mins
Undercover in a gleaming world where nobody asks questions.
David Collins follows the money trail through Dubai’s crowded gold souk to its luxurious office blocks.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Flower companies, food companies, real estate.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Wow, a marble and ceramic trading company.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh gosh, the list goes on and on and on, doesn't.
I mean, there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple
of dozen companies here, is there.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I mean, this is one thing that I don't even
think the NCAA are aware of the extent of, you know,
how many companies and how diverse.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It was, it really is.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So I'm a little bit nervous. I've never done this before.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
David Collins is speaking to a gold trader they met
a few days.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Before, one of them. Can you just remind me so
how much goals am I able to buy? I think
you said I could spend one hundred thousand dirhm?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The reason David says he's nervous is that he's undercover.
He's continuing his investigation into how criminals like the Sunshine
and Lollipops gang were able to carry millions of pounds
worth of dirty money from the UK to Dubai and
where the money went next.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
If you're taking to UK, then.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
David's had a tip that the money can end up
being turned into gold.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
But in your hometown and your kid I don't know
what's the rule there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
The trader asked David if he's planning on taking the
gold home to the UK.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
One or pol brothers customers.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah, they say that if you take gold Bartle it's
a problem in the airport.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
He explains that simply taking a solid bar of gold
might cause problems with UK customs, so they usually the.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Chain, so there's no problem one. So the way you
get around it is you put it as a chain
round your neck.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
How much?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
The trader explains, It's easy to change the gold into
jewelry that way, No one in customs is going to
look at it, meaning you can carry that gold home unchecked,
then sell the gold and spend the money.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Did it so? I want to wait? So it's a
bit lower.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They discussed gold prices, when to invest, until David thinks
it's time to ask the question because just.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Between you and me, just between you and me, literally,
some of the money might be for drugs in the UK.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
David says, the money might be from drugs in the UK.
The gold trader pauses for a second, then says there
is no issue on that one. I'm Fiona Hamilton and
from the Times. The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia.
(03:14):
This is Cocainey Episode seven, the Dubai Gold Rush.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So final destination is to dub It is yes, very.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Thanks Leman, Welcome to Dubai and Tasha Airport local time.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Arrived in Dubai late one Monday night. Just like Francesca,
the Cashmere I spoke to in the last episode, I
picked up my bags and stroll past customs. Unlike Francesca,
I didn't have millions of pounds stuffed into my suitcase
to declare I'll take this one. Once outside, I get
(04:04):
a taxi to my hotel. Very futuristic car, a brand
new Tesla. We drive down the Shiksaied Road, the main
motorway that runs the length of the city. Skyscraper after
skyscraper filled with offices, condos and hotels whiz by. The
(04:26):
city is the beating heart of the United Arab Emirates,
one of the more business friendly economies in the Middle East.
You're on, Oh, that's the Burge. I'm app yes, Wow,
it looks like a windsail, doesn't it. Seeing the Burge
(04:46):
Arab Hotel piqued my interest. It's a seven star hotel. Yeah,
if that's even a thing. My taxi driver says, it's
about ten pounds a night to stay. How much will
it costs to have a wedding? Uh?
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Where you going?
Speaker 4 (05:04):
A lot?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And it's here where Daniel Kinahan, an Irish boxing promoter
accused of running a global drug cartel dubbed the Cocaine Cowboys,
got married in twenty seventeen. The wedding was said to
be a who's who of those in the global drug trade.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration reportedly calculated that those on
(05:29):
the guest list had shipped twenty three billion pounds worth
of cocaine into Europe between them. Do you take the
customers there? You have so many dimes? Have you? What
jobs did he do?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Though?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Did he never tell you? Do you like business people?
They never see ow they have got so much, They
never tell the secret of how they earned money macabby jokes.
This year, it was revealed that Daniel Kinahan's wife owns
a multimillion dollar villa in Dubai with gleaming white walls,
(06:05):
elegant arched doorways and bright red roof tiles. I remember
Pete Costa, the Dutch pineapple trader linked to the torture
chambers Fiona went to check out. Earlier in this series,
he said to have had a Dubai real estate portfolio
worth millions. It feels as if this modern city of
(06:27):
luxurious skyscrapers and anti shopping malls has become the place
of choice for cartel bosses to kick back and malax
away from their home countries in a different jurisdiction, Which
is what's led me to the next stage in our
investigation into the global cocaine business, looking at what happens
(06:47):
to the profits. Once you've got your criminal cash to Dubai,
how do you then launder that money on a large scale. Well,
you want to get it into the legitimate economy and
that makes it harder for law enforcement to trace it.
And I've been tipped that a good way to do
this is to invest it in gold. Brilliant, Thanks for
(07:15):
so this is the center.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
Of the main center, is this big shot.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The next day, I leave the main tourist spot of
Dubai and go to an area known as the gold
souk Asuki is Arabic for market, and this one is
full of gold traders at their stalls, So you can
buy gold here Gije's. You can weigh it in the gigs?
What like the bars of it? Wow? Do people do that?
(07:46):
My taxi driver drops me off, Thank you so much.
By the streets are full of small stalls, perfume shops,
coffee stands as well as this, there's plenty of gold shops.
Dubai was established in the nineteenth century as a small
(08:07):
fishing village, but since then it's booms. Oil money, tourism
and construction have seen the money flooding in. But gold
is also a big part of Dubai's economy. This souk
I've just arrived at has existed since the nineteen forties,
when traders and merchants from Iran and India first set
(08:27):
up their shops. By in nineteen sixties, this area had
become an important hob in a global gold trade. And
today people say there's over ten tons of gold in
this souk at any one time. But there's a dark
side to this story. I've been told that cash is
invested into gold by criminals. So how simple would it
(08:51):
be for a British criminal to come here and do this.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Of the sea.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's just what I wanted. I enter part the souk
and now I'm officially undercover. I'm in an area which
feels a bit like a department store, lined with display counters,
and then gold trader shops off to the side. I
feel on edge. There's plenty of security guards everywhere. A
(09:24):
look a glass shop, windows dripping with gold jewelry hanging
from pack displays. They are perfect and exactly what wanted.
I'd buy a cheap pair of knockoff sunglasses and a
nice belt, and I ask for a recommendation of a
decent gold trader wherever they're going to buy investing. I'm
(09:52):
directed to his shop. There's a group of men sitting
about making deals underneath a TV screen showing the day's
gold market prices, today's market. That's today's market. On the wall,
there's a portrait of the ruler of Dubai. Strike up
(10:13):
a conversation with one of them. So I'm just trying
to work out how basically he's in his early thirties
with thick black hair and an easy smile. We're going
to call him Rashid. I won't use his real name.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
We'll say surly.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Rashid reaches into a safe and shows me a gold bar.
So that's a small, heavier than It's exactly how you'd
imagine it would look, a rectangular block, like the kind
you see being piled into a robbers van in a
Hollywood heist film. It's quite smart, Rashid's polite, but it's
(11:08):
noisy here and not private enough for the kind of
deal I want to make great thanks for. Outside Rashid's store,
I pass a couple more display counters. I enter another
gold traders, just shopping after that price. Much the same happens.
(11:30):
The trader pulls a bar of gold from a safe
and puts it on the counter. How much I leave?
But I'm a bit spooked. I wasn't sure he trusted me.
I might have just been imagining things, but I've done
a lot of undercover work, and sometimes you get a
(11:52):
feeling that the person doesn't quite buy your story. I
felt more secure chatting with Rashid, so I head out
of the gold Zuk and a few days later give
Rashid a call. I'm okay, how are you?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So I came in.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
We get pleasantries out of the way and quickly move
on to business. Staying under cover. My plan is to
pretend I'm actually a cocaine gangster. With a fortune in
drug profits I need to launder. Rashid suggests how I
could carry gold out of Dubai back into the UK
no questions asked. He says, I can turn my potential
(12:42):
gold purchase into a chain to wear through customs without
paying any taxes, and that he has British customers who
have done it in the past. So the way you
get around it is you put it as a chain
round your neck, absolutly, absactly. I want to find out
how easy it would be for cocaine gangster to buy
(13:03):
thousands of pounds worth of gold here, and what if
any checks there would be on the source of the money.
So what is Rashid willing to accept?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Just name, your passport number, passport on your phone.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
He says. All he really needs is my name for
the invoice and my passport number to put on the bill.
A photo of my passport on my phone is fine.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
And you were found on some time and there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But what about the source of my funds? If I
was looking to launder my cocaine profits, I certainly wouldn't
want anyone doing checks on where that money was from.
So I want to see how much gold Rashid might
be willing to sell me without any paperwork or check X.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
The one one thing is, so do you need any
checks to.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Know where I've got the money?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
If it's more than like ve so two three kg,
it's okay with no checks?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, okay, because it's just the one thing is I'm
not sure where the money has come from.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, just between you and me, Just between you and me.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Literally, I think some of the money might be from
like crime, maybe drugs, like okay, that's just some of
the money might be from like drugs in the u K.
But I'm not sure. But if there's no checks, is
that okay?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You're going to me about exactly?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, issue on that point.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So what just happened? I just confessed some of the
money may come from drugs and crime. At first, Rashid
says he can't hear me, but after repeating it, I'm
confident he's understood my proposition. He says, if I bring
him dear ams, the local currency and not British pounds,
(15:30):
then there is no issue on that one. So what
does this actually mean? Rashid has admitted that he will
sell me three kilograms of gold in cash, knowing the
source of that money could well be from drugs such
as cocaine. That's one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of
(15:51):
criminal money or three hundred and forty grand in Aussie dollars,
nearly a quarter of a million of US. It's that simple.
If you, as a cocaine boss running a cartel, could
get your money here to Dubai. You can launder nearly
two hundred thousand pounds with barely a proper passport check.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Oh yeah, great stuff. I've be in touched. Take care
all right, thye.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So that was fascinating. He was not kind of phased
at all. Yeah, I mean I am amazed actually by
how easy it would be. You know, if I was
a criminal, we could be moving kilos of gold very
quickly in the next few weeks. Would be able to
(16:44):
quite easily launder significant amounts of money through that gold trader.
Following that call to Vashid, I revealed that I was,
in fact a journalist. I asked him if he had
anything to say about our phone conversation. He told me
that his business would require evidence of the source of
(17:05):
funds for gold purchases of around ten thousand pounds, and
he had no knowledge of criminals buying gold in Dubai.
If you look at it.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
As a business model, you'll always try and stave on
step ahead of your competitor. And there are some really
clever people who've offered in crime and they will always
find another way to stay half a step ahead, and
unfortunately it's just a reality we often have to play
catch up.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
This is Ian Truby. Ian's the National Crime Agency detective
I spoke to in the last episode who helped put
abdullahl Fallasse, the ring leader of the Sunshiner Lollipops gang,
behind bars. That's the group that smuggled over one hundred
million pounds out of the UK, using al Fallas's business
(17:53):
Omnivest Gold Trading as a cover. Once some money got
to Dubai, Ian and his team believer was laundered. But
how exactly the gang did it was harder to work out.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
Sterling's gone in been changed into local currency and that
currency is in turn being handed off to somebody else.
We've got some evidence that there were some investment in gold,
there was some investment in mining interests, but how much
of that investment was from this particular cash I can't
comment I just don't have that data why gold. Gold
(18:29):
is a really attractive commodity for criminals. It holds its value.
You can source it from countries where there is no control,
places like Africa, South America. There's an awful lot of
illegal mining going on. Unfortunately, I don't think it's too
difficult to get that gold into the legitimate supply chains,
get it stuck in a vault and that's it. That
(18:49):
value is set there. It's an attractive commodity. It's an
appreciating commodity.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So following the thread, I mean quite literally, coca plants
turned into cocaine transported by the cartels. You know, the
commodity has been sold in the UK that is then
being turned into gold bars at the end of that process.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
From my interpretation of what I've seen on this, an
element of that was happening Dubai being a gold market.
Now as much as anything else, that gold market would
also potentially be used by the criminals for laundering purposes
or the value transferred to by more cocaine or other
illicit commodity.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So as Ian says, the National Crime Agency believes some
of what Alphallaci did with the money from the Sunshine
and Lollipops gang could have ended up in a Dubai
gold souk. Now it was time to fully turn my
attention to al Phallasse and his front company, Omnives Gold Trading.
(19:52):
This was the company whose name was on letters that
the cash mules showed customs officials when arriving at Dubai Airport.
Speaker 8 (20:03):
The next station is Business Bay.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I got hold of some documents that showed Omnives Gold
Trading was located in an area of Dubai called Business Bay,
an area packed with corporate high rises and there's ever
swanky hotels. It's hot. You sometimes forget when you're in
Dubai with all the air corn in the hotels, taxi
and metro that this is a city in a desert.
(20:32):
I make my way to one specific office building. It's
a thirty six story glass skyscraper called Prime Tower. It's
in this building that Abdullah Alflass's company, Omnives Gold Trading
was registered. The documents also reveal that Omnives Gold was
liquidated in November twenty twenty one, just days before Alflassi
(20:54):
was arrested. In layman's terms, that means that officially stop
trading and closed down, but I want to know if
there's any trace of it left in this building, and
if anyone remembers anything about it. And to be on
the safe side, I stay undercover. Dubai and the UAE
is not a country with great media freedom. I don't
(21:16):
want my cover to be blown. So I head inside,
pretending to be a British businessman. If anyone asks, I
walk quickly past security, looking straight ahead and find the lifts.
I go up a few floors from the documents. I'm
(21:38):
pretty sure I've got the right one. I exit the
lift and I'm in a corridor filled with pre walls,
dark floor tiles, and windowless wooden doors. Each one has
a small sign to the side of the frame with
the name of the business and an office number.
Speaker 9 (21:58):
Remember Omnivest Gold. I have seen this name. I think
I have seen. You are not going to get side,
but I talked I have seen somewhere. Maybe he can garden.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
One of the office workers walking through the holes remembers
omnives Gold trading. He confers with a colleague or friend,
who then takes me to where he thinks it once was.
Speaker 9 (22:21):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So I'm knocking on a door it's got no sign
on the door whatsoever. A man answers, I'm looking for
Omnivest Gold Trading.
Speaker 9 (22:49):
My English, another dated thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I'm trying to look in to see a bit more,
but I'm asked to wait a moment. Hi, I think
the thanks showing you. We're looking for Omnives Gold Trading
gold gold. This time, a woman with dark brown eyes
answers the door, wearing a hitje ab. It's called Omnivest.
(23:16):
She doesn't really give me the chance to see in
keeping the door slightly. Ajar, I'm so close to getting
a good look inside the office where Alphallas's money laundering
operation was registered. You're not Omnis because I thought you were.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's completely different.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Another activity, another company.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The woman politely tells me that Omnives Gold Trading isn't here,
As she says, the current business is completely different. Another activity,
another company. Thank you so much, thank you, very grateful.
I feel deflated and desperate to know more about Abdullah
(24:02):
al Falassi and what he was doing with the money
that has been laundered out here in Dubai. Was Omnivest
Gold physically once here behind that door were the people
in the office or did al Faalaci simply rent it
so he had an address for his documents and that
one hundred million pounds plus of criminal money, much of
(24:23):
it from the cocaine trade. Where did it go? It
feels like it's dissolved into thin air. But it's time
to leave Dubai and head back to the UK. I've
got a flight to catch and have exhausted all my
leads for now. I'm here. I'm here.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Oh yeah, oh Hi David, Yeah, not bad.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Back home in Manchester. A coal fi owner, my colleague
on this investigation. Obviously, you know we've been looking at
this Sunshine and Lollipop's Cash Mules gang the National Crime Agency.
I want to show us something because I have a
fresh lead on Abdullah Flassi. A former colleague of ours,
John Simpson, who used to be a crime correspondent at times,
(25:15):
I had gotten hold of some documents which he was
happy to share. I've sent you an email. Can you
see the one? It's a pdf Omnives Gold Trading LLC.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, I'm just opening that up.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The documents were looking at give me much more information
about Abdullahu Flasse if you just go into the second
pdf on that email. If you can see what one
of them shows is all the companies that he was
involved in, not just omni vest gold trading, He had
stakes and a whole load of organizations, most of them
(25:49):
listed as a director or general manager.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Gosh, there's a really long list, isn't that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Flower companies, food companies, Yeah, yeah, real estate, Wow, a.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Marble and ceramic trading company.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Oh gosh, the list goes on and on and on, doesn't.
I mean there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple
of dozen companies here, is there?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
The scope is huge. I don't quite know what to
make of it all. I mean, this is one thing
that I don't even think the NCAA are aware of
the extent of you know, how many companies and how
diverse it was, it really is. There's something else was
going to show you as well, which I think you'll
be interested in. Yeah, just on that original email where
(26:36):
the PDFs were. If you click on do you see
the first link? We're looking at a website that showed
Alpha Lasse's reach went far beyond the UK and the UAE,
because it doesn't stop in Dubai. They actually stretched the
West Africa as.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, oh yeah, I wasn't expert. That's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
The website is for a company called Atlantic Holdings. The
site is no longer available online, but this is an
archive version of it. Atlantic Holdings is based in Ghana.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Oh I see you're in Ghana now, So.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Now we're in Ghana and it was the parent company
of Omnives Gold Trading, the company Alpha Lasse used to
give cover to his cash mules. So what we can
see here is that in July sixteenth, twenty nineteen, Omnives
Gold Trading Llc was part of Atlantic Holdings and on
(27:38):
its website it says Omnives Gold Trading LLC is our
trading arm in Dubai specializing in gold and rough diamond trading.
We import raw gold, refine and sell to financial institutions
within the UAE. Oh wow, So what does this all mean?
Basically from what this website is saying, Al Fallaci's company,
(28:02):
Omnives Gold Trading was the Dubai arm of a business
based in Ghana, West Africa. Right and get this Furda.
Omnivest is also a member of the UAE Kimberly Process
Certification scheme that is a global initiative for stemming the
(28:22):
trade in conflict diamonds and promoting peace and security. And
yet we know this same company that claims to have
this certificate for this scheme is basically being used as
a cover for organized crime.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
It's just extraordinary, isn't it incredible?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I think it's worth repeating this. According to this website,
the company omnives Gold Trading was allegedly part of a
global initiative to promote peace and security around conflict diamonds.
If true, the audacity of this does amaze me. Alphaalasei
was using omnivs Gold as a front for organized crime.
(29:04):
I've contacted the Kimberly Process certification scheme asking if he
had any comment on this, but they didn't respond. We
now know that al Fallaci owned a whole host of businesses.
We also know that omnives Gold was part of that
parent company, Atlantic Holdings. But who was Alphallase We know
(29:29):
he's an emorati whose wife's family owned property in London,
and previous to this had no criminal record, But the
website revealed new information about his past and also something
more about his business. If you click about us and
scroll down, it says our board members and there's three
(29:52):
of them on there, and one of them he looks
a lot younger than his police mugshot, and he's kind
of wearing his emirs white robes and headdress.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, and it's yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
That is Abdullah al Fhaalasei. What we're looking at is
the three board members on the Atlantic Holdings website back
in twenty twenty, and there he is. Abdullah Alphaalassi is
on the board. He's not just a director of Omnivest
Gold Trading, but sits on the board of the wider
(30:24):
umbrella organization. Interestingly, he goes by the name Abdullah bin Beyat.
His full name is Abdullah Mohammad Ali bin Beyat Alphaalassi.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
He just hasn't actually said al Fallaci on there, but
it's clearly him.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It's clearly him.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Like some of these details that he holds an MSc
from the Dubai Please College. Yeah, and there it mentions
omni Vest directly.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
Today, I'm going to take you on a trip around by.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Picture this get at the highest three sixty infinity pool
in the world exclusively. In recent years, Dubai's become a
holiday destination and the UA is targeted tourists with adverts
like the ones I'm watching.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Now as City the redefines the Lasuer experience. They're talking
about fine dining, they're taking you from the sky, the
arcis is in the raven sea, and of course vintage
rides for how you're looking like a movie star.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
But as I'm finding out, behind this veneer a place
of fun, some and affordable decadence if you look for it,
there's an uneasy tension. In February this year, the global
watchdog that looks at how countries deal with money laundering
(31:48):
took the UAE off its Gray list. That's the list
of countries under increased monitoring for how they're dealing with
things like money laundering and terrorist financing. While working on
this series, I contacted the UA authorities and asked them
about Omnives Gold and Abdullah al Fallase. Here's part of
(32:09):
their response, read by one of the producers on this show.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
In February this year, the Financial Action Task Force, the
global standard setter for measures to fight money laundering, praised
the UAE's significant progress. The UAE is committed to continuing
these efforts and actions more than ever today and over
the longer term.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Back to al Pallasse, omnives Gold and Atlantic Holdings. Now
we know that Abdullah Felase went to jail in twenty
twenty two for being the ringleader of the Sunshine and
Lollipops money laundering operation. We also know that the website
for Atlantic Holdings is no longer active and there is
(32:55):
no sign of Omnivs Gold trading anymore. But I came
across from other website with a very similar name. It's
called Atlantic trust Holding.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I'm just looking through this one now.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So the interesting thing about this company, which is still
active is that it shares a lot of the same
companies that Atlantic Holdings had.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I wanted to know more about this and if this
company has any connection to Alpha Lasse, who's currently in
prison in the UK. So I contacted Atlantic trust Holding
and asked them. The chairman sent me a response, part
of which is read here by producer.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
Atlantic Trust Holding has been in existence for close to
twenty years now and had no dealings with Atlantic Holdings
of Dubai. The website for Atlantic Holdings of Dubai was
controlled by Alpha Lasse and his business partner. We had
nothing to do with any of his activities as a
matter of fact, I've had I had no contact with
(34:01):
Abdullah for some eight years now. We know nothing about
his activities, if anything at all. I would be someone
to be jubilant because Abdullah used his influence to literally
bully people.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
So that's it. Then that trail ends there. I still
don't know exactly what Alpha Lassi did with the one
hundred and ten million that was smuggled into Dubai using
his signature and Omnivus gold as a cover, but I
have managed to find out more about his various business
interests in the UAE than has ever been known before.
(34:40):
This tangled web has shown me how international drugs gangs
can launder their money. Following the web of companies laid
out in these documents shows me just how complex and
multinational the modern day cocaine business has become. We followed
the raw material from the fields where it's grown, to
(35:03):
the ports and tunnels where it's exported out of South
America to Europe, at the massive distribution hub in Rotterdam,
to the UK and then Dubai. At every stage a
different criminal group has been involved in that part of
the business. And then from here the money trail has
(35:24):
suddenly split and leads into different countries and different businesses,
to gold, to mining. The National Crime Agency has also
told me that an alleged Sunshine and Lollipops gang member
was found with gold bars in Tanzanaia. I've also heard
via a source that Alphallasse was in contact with people
(35:48):
in the Netherlands and Hong Kong. While Alphallasse is now
behind bars, we know the profits from the cocaine trade
are at a record high, with money laundering widespread, and
I've got no doubt that there's more people like al
Fallasse willing to do the same. Fiona and I finish
(36:09):
off our chat. I don't think I've ever seen an
illustration quite so clear.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Step by step, yeah, of kind of from the UK
coat trade, through cash money through to Dubai. Let me
have this purchase of gold in Tanzania and Africa. It's
like a full circle, isn't it Almost?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It just shows, doesn't it, how this is obviously a
very fruitful area for the type of people that we're
looking into to legitimize money and put it into other
ventures far away from where the drug dealing is originally
going on that you've been sort of exposing in this podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, absolutely, so is that the end of our trail?
Well no, not quite. So this is it. This is
the end of the line. Because my other colleague on
(37:11):
this investigation, Stephen Drill, has arrived home after visiting the
Coker Fields in Columbia and the Narco Tunnels in Mexico
earlier in this series. And while we thought the money
trail had disappeared into this web of overseas investments and
corporate records, Stephen was just about to pick that trail up,
(37:32):
running right past his front door. Hi, my name's Stephen Drill.
Speaker 8 (37:37):
I'm a journalist.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I just want to touch base. Are you the owner
of the property?
Speaker 7 (37:42):
I just was wondering if the price has been seized
by the police or what's happening with it now?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
That's next time in the final episode of Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Cocaine Nick is a joint investigation from The Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Steven Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. Additional reporting on this
episode from John Simpson at The News Movement. The series
is produced by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will
(38:27):
Rowe and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by
Jasper Leak, with original music by Tom Burchell. Special thanks
on this episode to our security team Chris Kemp and
Pete Emerson Thomas And if you want to get in
touch with any questions or thoughts on the series, email
cocaine In at the Times dot co dot uk
Flower companies, food companies, real estate.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Wow, a marble and ceramic trading company.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Oh gosh, the list goes on and on and on, doesn't.
I mean, there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple
of dozen companies here, is there.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I mean, this is one thing that I don't even
think the NCAA are aware of the extent of, you know,
how many companies and how diverse.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It was, it really is.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
So I'm a little bit nervous. I've never done this before.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
David Collins is speaking to a gold trader they met
a few days.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Before, one of them. Can you just remind me so
how much goals am I able to buy? I think
you said I could spend one hundred thousand dirhm?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Is that right?
Speaker 1 (01:00):
The reason David says he's nervous is that he's undercover.
He's continuing his investigation into how criminals like the Sunshine
and Lollipops gang were able to carry millions of pounds
worth of dirty money from the UK to Dubai and
where the money went next.
Speaker 3 (01:18):
If you're taking to UK, then.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
David's had a tip that the money can end up
being turned into gold.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
But in your hometown and your kid I don't know
what's the rule there.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
The trader asked David if he's planning on taking the
gold home to the UK.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
One or pol brothers customers.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
Yeah, they say that if you take gold Bartle it's
a problem in the airport.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
He explains that simply taking a solid bar of gold
might cause problems with UK customs, so they usually the.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Chain, so there's no problem one. So the way you
get around it is you put it as a chain
round your neck.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
How much?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
The trader explains, It's easy to change the gold into
jewelry that way, No one in customs is going to
look at it, meaning you can carry that gold home unchecked,
then sell the gold and spend the money.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Did it so? I want to wait? So it's a
bit lower.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
They discussed gold prices, when to invest, until David thinks
it's time to ask the question because just.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Between you and me, just between you and me, literally,
some of the money might be for drugs in the UK.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
David says, the money might be from drugs in the UK.
The gold trader pauses for a second, then says there
is no issue on that one. I'm Fiona Hamilton and
from the Times. The Sunday Times and News Corp Australia.
(03:14):
This is Cocainey Episode seven, the Dubai Gold Rush.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
So final destination is to dub It is yes, very.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
Thanks Leman, Welcome to Dubai and Tasha Airport local time.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Arrived in Dubai late one Monday night. Just like Francesca,
the Cashmere I spoke to in the last episode, I
picked up my bags and stroll past customs. Unlike Francesca,
I didn't have millions of pounds stuffed into my suitcase
to declare I'll take this one. Once outside, I get
(04:04):
a taxi to my hotel. Very futuristic car, a brand
new Tesla. We drive down the Shiksaied Road, the main
motorway that runs the length of the city. Skyscraper after
skyscraper filled with offices, condos and hotels whiz by. The
(04:26):
city is the beating heart of the United Arab Emirates,
one of the more business friendly economies in the Middle East.
You're on, Oh, that's the Burge. I'm app yes, Wow,
it looks like a windsail, doesn't it. Seeing the Burge
(04:46):
Arab Hotel piqued my interest. It's a seven star hotel. Yeah,
if that's even a thing. My taxi driver says, it's
about ten pounds a night to stay. How much will
it costs to have a wedding? Uh?
Speaker 5 (05:03):
Where you going?
Speaker 4 (05:04):
A lot?
Speaker 2 (05:07):
And it's here where Daniel Kinahan, an Irish boxing promoter
accused of running a global drug cartel dubbed the Cocaine Cowboys,
got married in twenty seventeen. The wedding was said to
be a who's who of those in the global drug trade.
The US Drug Enforcement Administration reportedly calculated that those on
(05:29):
the guest list had shipped twenty three billion pounds worth
of cocaine into Europe between them. Do you take the
customers there? You have so many dimes? Have you? What
jobs did he do?
Speaker 6 (05:40):
Though?
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Did he never tell you? Do you like business people?
They never see ow they have got so much, They
never tell the secret of how they earned money macabby jokes.
This year, it was revealed that Daniel Kinahan's wife owns
a multimillion dollar villa in Dubai with gleaming white walls,
(06:05):
elegant arched doorways and bright red roof tiles. I remember
Pete Costa, the Dutch pineapple trader linked to the torture
chambers Fiona went to check out. Earlier in this series,
he said to have had a Dubai real estate portfolio
worth millions. It feels as if this modern city of
(06:27):
luxurious skyscrapers and anti shopping malls has become the place
of choice for cartel bosses to kick back and malax
away from their home countries in a different jurisdiction, Which
is what's led me to the next stage in our
investigation into the global cocaine business, looking at what happens
(06:47):
to the profits. Once you've got your criminal cash to Dubai,
how do you then launder that money on a large scale. Well,
you want to get it into the legitimate economy and
that makes it harder for law enforcement to trace it.
And I've been tipped that a good way to do
this is to invest it in gold. Brilliant, Thanks for
(07:15):
so this is the center.
Speaker 7 (07:17):
Of the main center, is this big shot.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
The next day, I leave the main tourist spot of
Dubai and go to an area known as the gold
souk Asuki is Arabic for market, and this one is
full of gold traders at their stalls, So you can
buy gold here Gije's. You can weigh it in the gigs?
What like the bars of it? Wow? Do people do that?
(07:46):
My taxi driver drops me off, Thank you so much.
By the streets are full of small stalls, perfume shops,
coffee stands as well as this, there's plenty of gold shops.
Dubai was established in the nineteenth century as a small
(08:07):
fishing village, but since then it's booms. Oil money, tourism
and construction have seen the money flooding in. But gold
is also a big part of Dubai's economy. This souk
I've just arrived at has existed since the nineteen forties,
when traders and merchants from Iran and India first set
(08:27):
up their shops. By in nineteen sixties, this area had
become an important hob in a global gold trade. And
today people say there's over ten tons of gold in
this souk at any one time. But there's a dark
side to this story. I've been told that cash is
invested into gold by criminals. So how simple would it
(08:51):
be for a British criminal to come here and do this.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Of the sea.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
That's just what I wanted. I enter part the souk
and now I'm officially undercover. I'm in an area which
feels a bit like a department store, lined with display counters,
and then gold trader shops off to the side. I
feel on edge. There's plenty of security guards everywhere. A
(09:24):
look a glass shop, windows dripping with gold jewelry hanging
from pack displays. They are perfect and exactly what wanted.
I'd buy a cheap pair of knockoff sunglasses and a
nice belt, and I ask for a recommendation of a
decent gold trader wherever they're going to buy investing. I'm
(09:52):
directed to his shop. There's a group of men sitting
about making deals underneath a TV screen showing the day's
gold market prices, today's market. That's today's market. On the wall,
there's a portrait of the ruler of Dubai. Strike up
(10:13):
a conversation with one of them. So I'm just trying
to work out how basically he's in his early thirties
with thick black hair and an easy smile. We're going
to call him Rashid. I won't use his real name.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
We'll say surly.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
Rashid reaches into a safe and shows me a gold bar.
So that's a small, heavier than It's exactly how you'd
imagine it would look, a rectangular block, like the kind
you see being piled into a robbers van in a
Hollywood heist film. It's quite smart, Rashid's polite, but it's
(11:08):
noisy here and not private enough for the kind of
deal I want to make great thanks for. Outside Rashid's store,
I pass a couple more display counters. I enter another
gold traders, just shopping after that price. Much the same happens.
(11:30):
The trader pulls a bar of gold from a safe
and puts it on the counter. How much I leave?
But I'm a bit spooked. I wasn't sure he trusted me.
I might have just been imagining things, but I've done
a lot of undercover work, and sometimes you get a
(11:52):
feeling that the person doesn't quite buy your story. I
felt more secure chatting with Rashid, so I head out
of the gold Zuk and a few days later give
Rashid a call. I'm okay, how are you?
Speaker 3 (12:17):
So I came in.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
We get pleasantries out of the way and quickly move
on to business. Staying under cover. My plan is to
pretend I'm actually a cocaine gangster. With a fortune in
drug profits I need to launder. Rashid suggests how I
could carry gold out of Dubai back into the UK
no questions asked. He says, I can turn my potential
(12:42):
gold purchase into a chain to wear through customs without
paying any taxes, and that he has British customers who
have done it in the past. So the way you
get around it is you put it as a chain
round your neck, absolutly, absactly. I want to find out
how easy it would be for cocaine gangster to buy
(13:03):
thousands of pounds worth of gold here, and what if
any checks there would be on the source of the money.
So what is Rashid willing to accept?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Just name, your passport number, passport on your phone.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
He says. All he really needs is my name for
the invoice and my passport number to put on the bill.
A photo of my passport on my phone is fine.
Speaker 8 (13:37):
And you were found on some time and there's a problem.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
But what about the source of my funds? If I
was looking to launder my cocaine profits, I certainly wouldn't
want anyone doing checks on where that money was from.
So I want to see how much gold Rashid might
be willing to sell me without any paperwork or check X.
Speaker 3 (14:02):
The one one thing is, so do you need any
checks to.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
Know where I've got the money?
Speaker 3 (14:08):
If it's more than like ve so two three kg,
it's okay with no checks?
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah, okay, because it's just the one thing is I'm
not sure where the money has come from.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
Yeah, just between you and me, Just between you and me.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Literally, I think some of the money might be from
like crime, maybe drugs, like okay, that's just some of
the money might be from like drugs in the u K.
But I'm not sure. But if there's no checks, is
that okay?
Speaker 3 (15:00):
You're going to me about exactly?
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Yeah, issue on that point.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
So what just happened? I just confessed some of the
money may come from drugs and crime. At first, Rashid
says he can't hear me, but after repeating it, I'm
confident he's understood my proposition. He says, if I bring
him dear ams, the local currency and not British pounds,
(15:30):
then there is no issue on that one. So what
does this actually mean? Rashid has admitted that he will
sell me three kilograms of gold in cash, knowing the
source of that money could well be from drugs such
as cocaine. That's one hundred and eighty thousand pounds of
(15:51):
criminal money or three hundred and forty grand in Aussie dollars,
nearly a quarter of a million of US. It's that simple.
If you, as a cocaine boss running a cartel, could
get your money here to Dubai. You can launder nearly
two hundred thousand pounds with barely a proper passport check.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Oh yeah, great stuff. I've be in touched. Take care
all right, thye.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
So that was fascinating. He was not kind of phased
at all. Yeah, I mean I am amazed actually by
how easy it would be. You know, if I was
a criminal, we could be moving kilos of gold very
quickly in the next few weeks. Would be able to
(16:44):
quite easily launder significant amounts of money through that gold trader.
Following that call to Vashid, I revealed that I was,
in fact a journalist. I asked him if he had
anything to say about our phone conversation. He told me
that his business would require evidence of the source of
(17:05):
funds for gold purchases of around ten thousand pounds, and
he had no knowledge of criminals buying gold in Dubai.
If you look at it.
Speaker 8 (17:15):
As a business model, you'll always try and stave on
step ahead of your competitor. And there are some really
clever people who've offered in crime and they will always
find another way to stay half a step ahead, and
unfortunately it's just a reality we often have to play
catch up.
Speaker 2 (17:33):
This is Ian Truby. Ian's the National Crime Agency detective
I spoke to in the last episode who helped put
abdullahl Fallasse, the ring leader of the Sunshiner Lollipops gang,
behind bars. That's the group that smuggled over one hundred
million pounds out of the UK, using al Fallas's business
(17:53):
Omnivest Gold Trading as a cover. Once some money got
to Dubai, Ian and his team believer was laundered. But
how exactly the gang did it was harder to work out.
Speaker 8 (18:06):
Sterling's gone in been changed into local currency and that
currency is in turn being handed off to somebody else.
We've got some evidence that there were some investment in gold,
there was some investment in mining interests, but how much
of that investment was from this particular cash I can't
comment I just don't have that data why gold. Gold
(18:29):
is a really attractive commodity for criminals. It holds its value.
You can source it from countries where there is no control,
places like Africa, South America. There's an awful lot of
illegal mining going on. Unfortunately, I don't think it's too
difficult to get that gold into the legitimate supply chains,
get it stuck in a vault and that's it. That
(18:49):
value is set there. It's an attractive commodity. It's an
appreciating commodity.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
So following the thread, I mean quite literally, coca plants
turned into cocaine transported by the cartels. You know, the
commodity has been sold in the UK that is then
being turned into gold bars at the end of that process.
Speaker 8 (19:14):
From my interpretation of what I've seen on this, an
element of that was happening Dubai being a gold market.
Now as much as anything else, that gold market would
also potentially be used by the criminals for laundering purposes
or the value transferred to by more cocaine or other
illicit commodity.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
So as Ian says, the National Crime Agency believes some
of what Alphallaci did with the money from the Sunshine
and Lollipops gang could have ended up in a Dubai
gold souk. Now it was time to fully turn my
attention to al Phallasse and his front company, Omnives Gold Trading.
(19:52):
This was the company whose name was on letters that
the cash mules showed customs officials when arriving at Dubai Airport.
Speaker 8 (20:03):
The next station is Business Bay.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
I got hold of some documents that showed Omnives Gold
Trading was located in an area of Dubai called Business Bay,
an area packed with corporate high rises and there's ever
swanky hotels. It's hot. You sometimes forget when you're in
Dubai with all the air corn in the hotels, taxi
and metro that this is a city in a desert.
(20:32):
I make my way to one specific office building. It's
a thirty six story glass skyscraper called Prime Tower. It's
in this building that Abdullah Alflass's company, Omnives Gold Trading
was registered. The documents also reveal that Omnives Gold was
liquidated in November twenty twenty one, just days before Alflassi
(20:54):
was arrested. In layman's terms, that means that officially stop
trading and closed down, but I want to know if
there's any trace of it left in this building, and
if anyone remembers anything about it. And to be on
the safe side, I stay undercover. Dubai and the UAE
is not a country with great media freedom. I don't
(21:16):
want my cover to be blown. So I head inside,
pretending to be a British businessman. If anyone asks, I
walk quickly past security, looking straight ahead and find the lifts.
I go up a few floors from the documents. I'm
(21:38):
pretty sure I've got the right one. I exit the
lift and I'm in a corridor filled with pre walls,
dark floor tiles, and windowless wooden doors. Each one has
a small sign to the side of the frame with
the name of the business and an office number.
Speaker 9 (21:58):
Remember Omnivest Gold. I have seen this name. I think
I have seen. You are not going to get side,
but I talked I have seen somewhere. Maybe he can garden.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
One of the office workers walking through the holes remembers
omnives Gold trading. He confers with a colleague or friend,
who then takes me to where he thinks it once was.
Speaker 9 (22:21):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
So I'm knocking on a door it's got no sign
on the door whatsoever. A man answers, I'm looking for
Omnivest Gold Trading.
Speaker 9 (22:49):
My English, another dated thank you.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I'm trying to look in to see a bit more,
but I'm asked to wait a moment. Hi, I think
the thanks showing you. We're looking for Omnives Gold Trading
gold gold. This time, a woman with dark brown eyes
answers the door, wearing a hitje ab. It's called Omnivest.
(23:16):
She doesn't really give me the chance to see in
keeping the door slightly. Ajar, I'm so close to getting
a good look inside the office where Alphallas's money laundering
operation was registered. You're not Omnis because I thought you were.
Speaker 3 (23:35):
It's completely different.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Another activity, another company.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
The woman politely tells me that Omnives Gold Trading isn't here,
As she says, the current business is completely different. Another activity,
another company. Thank you so much, thank you, very grateful.
I feel deflated and desperate to know more about Abdullah
(24:02):
al Falassi and what he was doing with the money
that has been laundered out here in Dubai. Was Omnivest
Gold physically once here behind that door were the people
in the office or did al Faalaci simply rent it
so he had an address for his documents and that
one hundred million pounds plus of criminal money, much of
(24:23):
it from the cocaine trade. Where did it go? It
feels like it's dissolved into thin air. But it's time
to leave Dubai and head back to the UK. I've
got a flight to catch and have exhausted all my
leads for now. I'm here. I'm here.
Speaker 6 (24:46):
Hi.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Oh yeah, oh Hi David, Yeah, not bad.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Back home in Manchester. A coal fi owner, my colleague
on this investigation. Obviously, you know we've been looking at
this Sunshine and Lollipop's Cash Mules gang the National Crime Agency.
I want to show us something because I have a
fresh lead on Abdullah Flassi. A former colleague of ours,
John Simpson, who used to be a crime correspondent at times,
(25:15):
I had gotten hold of some documents which he was
happy to share. I've sent you an email. Can you
see the one? It's a pdf Omnives Gold Trading LLC.
Speaker 1 (25:25):
Yeah, I'm just opening that up.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
The documents were looking at give me much more information
about Abdullahu Flasse if you just go into the second
pdf on that email. If you can see what one
of them shows is all the companies that he was
involved in, not just omni vest gold trading, He had
stakes and a whole load of organizations, most of them
(25:49):
listed as a director or general manager.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Gosh, there's a really long list, isn't that.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
It's huge.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Flower companies, food companies, Yeah, yeah, real estate, Wow, a.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Marble and ceramic trading company.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Oh gosh, the list goes on and on and on, doesn't.
I mean there's well over a dozen, nearly a couple
of dozen companies here, is there?
Speaker 2 (26:14):
The scope is huge. I don't quite know what to
make of it all. I mean, this is one thing
that I don't even think the NCAA are aware of
the extent of you know, how many companies and how
diverse it was, it really is. There's something else was
going to show you as well, which I think you'll
be interested in. Yeah, just on that original email where
(26:36):
the PDFs were. If you click on do you see
the first link? We're looking at a website that showed
Alpha Lasse's reach went far beyond the UK and the UAE,
because it doesn't stop in Dubai. They actually stretched the
West Africa as.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Well, oh yeah, I wasn't expert. That's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
The website is for a company called Atlantic Holdings. The
site is no longer available online, but this is an
archive version of it. Atlantic Holdings is based in Ghana.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Oh I see you're in Ghana now, So.
Speaker 2 (27:17):
Now we're in Ghana and it was the parent company
of Omnives Gold Trading, the company Alpha Lasse used to
give cover to his cash mules. So what we can
see here is that in July sixteenth, twenty nineteen, Omnives
Gold Trading Llc was part of Atlantic Holdings and on
(27:38):
its website it says Omnives Gold Trading LLC is our
trading arm in Dubai specializing in gold and rough diamond trading.
We import raw gold, refine and sell to financial institutions
within the UAE. Oh wow, So what does this all mean?
Basically from what this website is saying, Al Fallaci's company,
(28:02):
Omnives Gold Trading was the Dubai arm of a business
based in Ghana, West Africa. Right and get this Furda.
Omnivest is also a member of the UAE Kimberly Process
Certification scheme that is a global initiative for stemming the
(28:22):
trade in conflict diamonds and promoting peace and security. And
yet we know this same company that claims to have
this certificate for this scheme is basically being used as
a cover for organized crime.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
It's just extraordinary, isn't it incredible?
Speaker 2 (28:42):
I think it's worth repeating this. According to this website,
the company omnives Gold Trading was allegedly part of a
global initiative to promote peace and security around conflict diamonds.
If true, the audacity of this does amaze me. Alphaalasei
was using omnivs Gold as a front for organized crime.
(29:04):
I've contacted the Kimberly Process certification scheme asking if he
had any comment on this, but they didn't respond. We
now know that al Fallaci owned a whole host of businesses.
We also know that omnives Gold was part of that
parent company, Atlantic Holdings. But who was Alphallase We know
(29:29):
he's an emorati whose wife's family owned property in London,
and previous to this had no criminal record, But the
website revealed new information about his past and also something
more about his business. If you click about us and
scroll down, it says our board members and there's three
(29:52):
of them on there, and one of them he looks
a lot younger than his police mugshot, and he's kind
of wearing his emirs white robes and headdress.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Yeah, and it's yeah, but.
Speaker 2 (30:04):
That is Abdullah al Fhaalasei. What we're looking at is
the three board members on the Atlantic Holdings website back
in twenty twenty, and there he is. Abdullah Alphaalassi is
on the board. He's not just a director of Omnivest
Gold Trading, but sits on the board of the wider
(30:24):
umbrella organization. Interestingly, he goes by the name Abdullah bin Beyat.
His full name is Abdullah Mohammad Ali bin Beyat Alphaalassi.
Speaker 1 (30:38):
He just hasn't actually said al Fallaci on there, but
it's clearly him.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
It's clearly him.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
Like some of these details that he holds an MSc
from the Dubai Please College. Yeah, and there it mentions
omni Vest directly.
Speaker 5 (30:54):
Today, I'm going to take you on a trip around by.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Picture this get at the highest three sixty infinity pool
in the world exclusively. In recent years, Dubai's become a
holiday destination and the UA is targeted tourists with adverts
like the ones I'm watching.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
Now as City the redefines the Lasuer experience. They're talking
about fine dining, they're taking you from the sky, the
arcis is in the raven sea, and of course vintage
rides for how you're looking like a movie star.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
But as I'm finding out, behind this veneer a place
of fun, some and affordable decadence if you look for it,
there's an uneasy tension. In February this year, the global
watchdog that looks at how countries deal with money laundering
(31:48):
took the UAE off its Gray list. That's the list
of countries under increased monitoring for how they're dealing with
things like money laundering and terrorist financing. While working on
this series, I contacted the UA authorities and asked them
about Omnives Gold and Abdullah al Fallase. Here's part of
(32:09):
their response, read by one of the producers on this show.
Speaker 5 (32:14):
In February this year, the Financial Action Task Force, the
global standard setter for measures to fight money laundering, praised
the UAE's significant progress. The UAE is committed to continuing
these efforts and actions more than ever today and over
the longer term.
Speaker 2 (32:34):
Back to al Pallasse, omnives Gold and Atlantic Holdings. Now
we know that Abdullah Felase went to jail in twenty
twenty two for being the ringleader of the Sunshine and
Lollipops money laundering operation. We also know that the website
for Atlantic Holdings is no longer active and there is
(32:55):
no sign of Omnivs Gold trading anymore. But I came
across from other website with a very similar name. It's
called Atlantic trust Holding.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Yeah, I'm just looking through this one now.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
So the interesting thing about this company, which is still
active is that it shares a lot of the same
companies that Atlantic Holdings had.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
I wanted to know more about this and if this
company has any connection to Alpha Lasse, who's currently in
prison in the UK. So I contacted Atlantic trust Holding
and asked them. The chairman sent me a response, part
of which is read here by producer.
Speaker 7 (33:39):
Atlantic Trust Holding has been in existence for close to
twenty years now and had no dealings with Atlantic Holdings
of Dubai. The website for Atlantic Holdings of Dubai was
controlled by Alpha Lasse and his business partner. We had
nothing to do with any of his activities as a
matter of fact, I've had I had no contact with
(34:01):
Abdullah for some eight years now. We know nothing about
his activities, if anything at all. I would be someone
to be jubilant because Abdullah used his influence to literally
bully people.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
So that's it. Then that trail ends there. I still
don't know exactly what Alpha Lassi did with the one
hundred and ten million that was smuggled into Dubai using
his signature and Omnivus gold as a cover, but I
have managed to find out more about his various business
interests in the UAE than has ever been known before.
(34:40):
This tangled web has shown me how international drugs gangs
can launder their money. Following the web of companies laid
out in these documents shows me just how complex and
multinational the modern day cocaine business has become. We followed
the raw material from the fields where it's grown, to
(35:03):
the ports and tunnels where it's exported out of South
America to Europe, at the massive distribution hub in Rotterdam,
to the UK and then Dubai. At every stage a
different criminal group has been involved in that part of
the business. And then from here the money trail has
(35:24):
suddenly split and leads into different countries and different businesses,
to gold, to mining. The National Crime Agency has also
told me that an alleged Sunshine and Lollipops gang member
was found with gold bars in Tanzanaia. I've also heard
via a source that Alphallasse was in contact with people
(35:48):
in the Netherlands and Hong Kong. While Alphallasse is now
behind bars, we know the profits from the cocaine trade
are at a record high, with money laundering widespread, and
I've got no doubt that there's more people like al
Fallasse willing to do the same. Fiona and I finish
(36:09):
off our chat. I don't think I've ever seen an
illustration quite so clear.
Speaker 4 (36:16):
Step by step, yeah, of kind of from the UK
coat trade, through cash money through to Dubai. Let me
have this purchase of gold in Tanzania and Africa. It's
like a full circle, isn't it Almost?
Speaker 1 (36:30):
It just shows, doesn't it, how this is obviously a
very fruitful area for the type of people that we're
looking into to legitimize money and put it into other
ventures far away from where the drug dealing is originally
going on that you've been sort of exposing in this podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, absolutely, so is that the end of our trail?
Well no, not quite. So this is it. This is
the end of the line. Because my other colleague on
(37:11):
this investigation, Stephen Drill, has arrived home after visiting the
Coker Fields in Columbia and the Narco Tunnels in Mexico
earlier in this series. And while we thought the money
trail had disappeared into this web of overseas investments and
corporate records, Stephen was just about to pick that trail up,
(37:32):
running right past his front door. Hi, my name's Stephen Drill.
Speaker 8 (37:37):
I'm a journalist.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I just want to touch base. Are you the owner
of the property?
Speaker 7 (37:42):
I just was wondering if the price has been seized
by the police or what's happening with it now?
Speaker 2 (37:51):
That's next time in the final episode of Cocaine Inc.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
Cocaine Nick is a joint investigation from The Times, The
Sunday Times and News Corp Australia. The reporters are David Collins,
Steven Drill and me Fiona Hamilton. Additional reporting on this
episode from John Simpson at The News Movement. The series
is produced by Sam Chanterassak. The executive producers are Will
(38:27):
Rowe and Dan Box. Audio production and editing is by
Jasper Leak, with original music by Tom Burchell. Special thanks
on this episode to our security team Chris Kemp and
Pete Emerson Thomas And if you want to get in
touch with any questions or thoughts on the series, email
cocaine In at the Times dot co dot uk
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