Crime gangs crippled by novel tactics

Reporter

Thursday 4 August 2011

SCOTLAND's elite crime- fighters carried out crippling "disruption" operations against gangsters more than once a week last year.

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David Leask Investigations Reporter

The Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency yesterday said it had caused turmoil in the underworld with a series of 59 schemes to undermine the nation’s 360 organised crime groups.

SCDEA officers harried gang front companies and seized nearly £1.3 million from the working capital of criminals – far more than ever before – and frustrated deals to buy guns and drugs at the 11th hour.

The agency also arrested 195 people, including 73 of the “most harmful and dangerous” criminals in the country, securing convictions that ended in a cumulative jail sentence of 275 years, a new record.But its director-general was yesterday proudest of the new armoury of disruption techniques – the kind of backdoor schemes that were used to prosecute Al Capone for tax evasion rather than banditry in prohibition-era America.The agency worked with a range of public regulators to frustrate organised crime groups trying to launder their cash through businesses in industries such as the taxi trade and security industry.But it also launched operations – excruciatingly irritating for gangsters – that meant they could not lease high-end cars that raise their status.Deputy Chief Constable Gordon Meldrum, the SCDEA’s director-general, said: “Disruption is the name of the game for us. It is what we focus on. It is what we are measured on and it is what is really, really important to us.”Previously the SCDEA had to live up to targets for seizing drugs. Now it simply counts the number of disruptions it was supposed to carry out. It has far exceeded its target for 2010-11 of 30 such operations.Mr Meldrum explained: “If you think about it logically, if we know organised crime is involved in a deal to bring drugs back in to Scotland and we know they are leaving Scotland with a big bag of cash, why would we let them do that? “Why would we run the risk of letting them leave the country with the money and let them bring back the drugs just so we could seize the white powder as a measure of our success?”At face value, last year the SCDEA seized less drugs than in previous years. Its headline figure was just over 80kg, well-below old targets of 300kg. But that comparison is meaningless, said Mr Meldrum, because the changing nature of drug imports means the substances seized were far more potent than the old hauls.Speaking of the 80kg grabbed last year, he said: “They are upstream and very high purity and – at a very conservative estimate – would very easily have achieved over 400kg of street- quality drugs.”Despite a record seizure in the English port of Southampton revealed yesterday, most narcotics make their way into Scotland in small batches of high-purity product. It is then bulked out – or cut – with adulterants.A real measure of the success of Scottish and UK operations is just how weak a lot of the drugs now seized in Scottish street operations are. The average purity of heroin, for example, has fallen from 30% two years ago to just 6.7% now. Cocaine, which Mr Meldrum believes is now Scotland’s favourite drug, has purities of under 5%.The SCDEA, meanwhile, is happily sharing intelligence with other agencies, including trading standards, NHS boards and councils. Crucially, some of these links are making it hard for Scotland’s drug importers – many big international operators – to travel abroad.The Herald understands visa restrictions have been imposed on significant Scottish players by both the governments of Canada and the United States.Those caught by the SCDEA included major players such as Sohaib Qureshi, who trafficked cocaine in Scotland, the Caribbean and South America. He was jailed in March for 12 years after Operation Klaxon, which also led to the arrest of two men in the Dominican Republic. Another gang which had tried to smuggle drugs into Scotland from Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, was also targeted, and David Carpenter, 46, and Luis Hildago, 54, were later jailed.

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Crime gangs crippled by novel tactics

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