Challenges

Provides the list of challenges overcome during the investigation.

These challenges may not feature in all investigations, but it is worth being alert to challenges such as these or of a similar nature. The following is a list of challenges which the case team had to overcome during the investigation:

  • the OCG were surveillance aware, making it difficult to conduct more common surveillance practices, the case team had to seek unique alternatives such as using account monitoring orders to monitor live transactions
  • the OCG made frequent use of ‘burner phones’ with frequent switches
  • the OCG adopted a ‘flood and go’ technique involving opening bank accounts, flooding the accounts with cash deposits, transferring the funds overseas, leaving the banks with no choice but to close the accounts — this methodology abuses the banks’ obligations to a risk-based approach, should a financial institution have suspicions around a bank account they have to report it to the UKFIU and take appropriate action to mitigate the risk, such as closing the bank account, this in turn assists the OCG as it leaves little trace of the former bank account, and when investigators are trying to locate bank account details, depending on the time passed, details of the closed bank account may not be available due to the bank only holding data for a maximum of 6 years — it is sometimes useful for investigation teams to work with financial institutions to arrange a ‘keep open’ request which prevents the bank account from closing whilst maintaining the obligations of the financial institution
  • the international letter of request (ILOR) to the UAE was prepared and submitted to the UAE via the UKCA however unbeknown to the CPS the ILOR did not make it to the authorities in the UAE, this meant a large amount of potential evidence was not possible to obtain — in court, the defence team used this lack of evidence to build upon their defence case, causing additional stress to the prosecution team
  • the start of the trial was delayed due to the principal suspect’s changing his legal team on more than one occasion, resulting in a postponement of the trial each time — this, coupled with the already significant delays with court listings generated as a result of Covid-19, meant the conclusion of the case was later than perhaps was necessary