R v Basra (Ajaib Singh)
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE COOKE |
| Judgment Date | 22 February 2002 |
| Neutral Citation | [2002] EWCA Crim 541 |
| Date | 22 February 2002 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No: 200103614/W4 |
[2002] EWCA Crim 541
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
The Strand
London
WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Kennedy
(Vice President of the Queen's Bench Division)
Mr Justice Grigson and
Mr Justice Cooke
No: 200103614/W4
MR J MCGUINNESS QC appeared on behalf of the Applicant
nd February 2002
This is an appeal against sentence brought by leave of a two judge court which considered that the matter should be dealt with by a full court of three judges because of the lack of guidelines on sentence for offences of this kind.
On 1st March 2001 at the Crown Court in Isleworth the applicant pleaded guilty to assisting another person to obtain the benefit of criminal conduct contrary to section 93A(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988; that was count 2 on the indictment. He was a man of 51 years of age. He was sentenced on 13th June 2001 to five years' imprisonment and a confiscation order was made in the sum of £172,746.
The essential facts were these. On a number of occasions the appellant exchanged large cash sums of sterling into foreign currency at a Bureau de Change called Link FX at Victoria railway station. Most of the exchanges were made into Dutch Guilders. On one particular occasion, 21st April 1998, Customs and Excise officers had been observing him. He was arrested at Heathrow Airport about to board a flight for Holland. In his possession were 388,925 Dutch Guilders which he had purchased earlier from the Bureau for £117,146. The Guilders was seized but the applicant was not then arrested.
Customs and Excise officers in plain clothes kept observations on the Link FX Bureau. On 29th February 2000 the applicant was seen to enter it and was arrested upon his departure. In his possession on that occasion were some 199,600 Dutch Guilders which the applicant had exchanged for £55,600. That amount and the amount seized on 21st April 1999 were still in the possession of Customs and Excise at the time of sentence and formed the subject matter of the confiscation order.
Originally it was the prosecution's primary case that the appellant was guilty on count 1, that of assisting another person to obtain the benefit of drug trafficking contrary to section 50(1) of the Drug Trafficking Act of 1994. But it was to count 2 that the appellant pleaded guilty, namely assisting another person to obtain the benefit of criminal conduct contrary to section 93A(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. That plea was not entered at the outset. In interview he was shown a schedule of transactions but said he did not remember them. He was asked in particular about the transaction on 21st April when he said the money had come from Africa.
When he did plead there was ultimately an agreed written basis of the plea which ran as follows:
"The applicant, on behalf of others, exchanged Sterling into Dutch Guilders at Link Exchange Bureau at Victoria on the following occasions."
There were then listed a series of occasions between the dates of 22nd October 1998 and 29th February 2000, some 11 occasions, with a total figure of £1.227 million involved. The written basis of plea went on to say that:
"The amounts in Sterling represented the proceeds of jewellery smuggled into the UK from Uganda, thus evading declaration for the purposes of payment of VAT Excise duties or other taxes. The suppliers of the diamonds were people whom the applicant said he knew only by their first names, which were Michael, Joseph and Karim. The purchaser of the diamonds was Iqbal Khan."
The written basis of plea went on to say that:
"The applicant's role was that of middle man between the supplier and the purchaser for which he received a commission of 3 per cent to 6 per cent. On one occasion he did his own deal...
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