Pakistani woman sentenced to jail in UK over large amount of money laundering from Pakistan
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LONDON: A Pakistani woman on Tuesday was sentenced to four and a half years of prison on accounts of money laundering and vandalizing.
Kingston Crown Court also sentenced Razwana Zeib's husband Rafaqat Hussain and three others for similar charges.
The 35-year-old mother of four children has been jailed for conspiring to GBP7 million cash-in-transit from Heathrow Airport.
The sum involved was one of the largest in recent years, the judge observed.
"This was a sophisticated operation which involved meticulous planning and execution," Judge Stephen John said.
She was jailed after travelling to Pakistan and setting up a bank account with the intention of laundering at least GBP0.9 million of the total amount that her spouse had helped steal.
Hussain was jailed in October for conspiring to steal after he helped two security guards use his van to take 26 bags of cash belonging to Credit Suisse, from inside a British Airways cargo depot at the airport.
Judge John told Zeib that while she may not have known about the fake heist, she was aware that the money she was dealing with was the product of a crime.
"You accept that you were not coerced. You were a willing participant, you were in it for financial gain and you were not a naïve and unassuming wife," the judge added.
On March 14, two Loomis employees, Mohammad Siddique and Ranjeev Singh, staged the fake heist under the guidance of Hussain. The two guards made it appear that they were victims; Siddique stopped the van to allow Singh a toilet break, who waited sometime before reporting the van missing.
Siddique drove away at speed, before later being found bound by cables on a service road near the M40 in Buckinghamshire, with the vehicle abandoned and the cash missing.
Hussain, 41, then conspired to launder the money with Zeib, 35, both of Chadwick Road, Slough.
Secret recordings made by a device planted by the police in Hussain's car caught Zeib discussing with her husband the amount of stolen cash to be paid to a co-conspirator, the court heard.
