R v GULBIR RANA Singh
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR KROLICK,LORD JUSTICE MAY,MR GOSLING,Lord Justice Auld,LORD JUSTICE AULD,RECORDER OF PRESTON,MR JUSTICE NELSON |
| Judgment Date | 18 December 2003 |
| Neutral Citation | [2003] EWCA Crim 3712,[2003] EWCA Crim 401 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No: 2001/95624 Z2,Case No: 200105624 D3 |
| Date | 18 December 2003 |
[2003] EWCA Crim 3712
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE CROWN COURT AT LEICESTER
HIS HONOUR JUDGE DE MILLE
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand,
London, WC2A 2LL
Lord Justice Auld
Mr. Justice Grigson and
Mr. Justice Roderick Evans
Case No: 200105624 D3
Mr. Ivan Krolick (instructed by Ealing Law Chamber) for the Appellant
Mr. Jonathan Gosling and Mr. Timothy Hannam (instructed by Commissioners of Customs and Excise) for the Respondent
On 19 th September 2001, before His Honour Judge de Mille and a jury in the Crown Court at Leicester, the appellant was convicted on three counts of conspiracy to money-launder, more precisely to convert, transfer and remove from the jurisdiction the proceeds of drug trafficking and/or of other criminal conduct, contrary to section 1(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1977. Jointly charged with the appellant in the same indictment were Paramjit Dhaliwal, Navtej Singh and Jasvir Singh, each of whom pleaded guilty to one of the three conspiracy counts.
We say that the appellant was convicted "before" the Judge and jury. In fact, he was not before them. In circumstances that we shall describe, he was absent from proceedings throughout the trial and was convicted in his absence. When he was eventually brought before the Court in late February and early March 2002, the Judge sentenced him on the latter date to seven years imprisonment on each of the three counts, the sentences to be served concurrently.
The appellant appeals against conviction on one ground by leave of the single Judge, and renews or makes original applications to this Court for leave to appeal against conviction on others. He also renews his application to appeal against sentence after refusal by the single Judge.
The Facts
The prosecution case was that, between June 1999 and March 2000, the appellant and his co-accused on all three counts, Dhaliwal, engaged in money�laundering. They exchanged large sums of money obtained illicitly in England into Dutch guilders. They took the guilders out of the jurisdiction or, in March 2000, in the last week or so of their conspiracy, arranged for Navtej and/or Jasvir to do it as couriers for them (counts 2 and 3). The appellant was said to be the principal conspirator. The total sum that they were alleged to have money-laundered over the nine months' period was about �6.2m.
The wording of the material parts of each of the counts in the statement of offence and in its particulars is of importance. Each statement of offence and its particulars charged the appellant with conspiracy to money launder the "proceeds of drug trafficking and/or criminal conduct". The full particulars in each count, so far as material, alleged that he and the relevant co-conspirator/s charged:
"� conspired together and with persons unknown, knowing or having reasonable grounds to suspect that certain property, namely banknotes, was, or in whole or in part directly or indirectly represented, another person's proceeds of drugs trafficking and/or criminal conduct, to convert or transfer or remove from the jurisdiction that property for the purpose of assisting any person to avoid prosecution for a drug trafficking offence and/or for an offence to which Part IV of the Criminal Justice Act 1988 applies, or for the purpose of avoiding the making or enforcement of a confiscation order, in contravention of �the Drug Trafficking Act 1994 and/or �the Criminal Justice Act 1988." [The Court's emphases]
As we see it, the issue for the jury was whether the prosecution had proved that there was an agreement to which the appellant was a party to launder money illicitly obtained, with the intention of assisting someone to avoid a prosecution for drug trafficking or other criminal offence or, in the event of conviction, a confiscation order.
The prosecution case and evidence were that the appellant and his fellow conspirators were money-laundering large sums of sterling which had come either from drug trafficking or other criminal conduct, it was not known which, into Dutch guilders. The appellant lives near Leicester; but most of the evidence related to his activities in London. The prosecution relied on two main lines of evidence, The first was observations by customs and excise officers of the appellant and/or his co-accused visiting, in the main, two bureaux de change, the Haleep and the Day Exchanges in Notting Hill Gate, carrying large bags in and out of them, and of day visits to Amsterdam. The second was evidence of Mr. Sharif, the owner of those bureaux, and members of his staff employed at them, and also of a Mr. Assan at another bureau de change, the Wall Street Forex in Paddington. Mr Assan had introduced a man whom he knew as Rana to Mr.. Sharif. And Mr. Sharif spoke of the system of recording transactions at his bureaux and of having conducted some of them himself with a man whom he knew as Singh or Sink to whom Mr. Assan had introduced him at the Wall Street Forex. Singh's or Sink's transactions were recorded by Mr. Sharif or his staff under one or other name, and a number of those transactions corresponded with the watching officers' observations of the appellant's visits to one or other of the bureaux. Mr. Sharif described at the trial how the appellant used to bring sterling in a suitcase or shopping bag to exchange for guilders.
The prosecution put in evidence a schedule of transactions over the nine months period of the main conspiracy alleged against the appellant and Dhaliwal, showing when and where the 42 alleged exchanges of sterling for guilders, making up the total of �6.2m, were transacted. The schedule was compiled from the records of the bureaux and spoken to by Mr. Sharif and/or his employees who gave evidence. Neither Mr. Sharif nor those employees had identified the appellant or had been asked if they could identify him. However, they variously spoke of the man whom they knew as Singh or Sink making substantial exchanges on the days and in the amounts set out in the schedule. They also said that he always conducted the transaction even when he was accompanied by another man, whom the prosecution maintained was mostly Dhaliwal.
On 13 July 1999, early in the period of the nine months conspiracy alleged against the appellant and Dhaliwal, customs officers stopped the appellant in a car at Dover. They found in the car, under the appellant's seat, 600,000 Dutch guilders that, earlier that day, he had obtained at the Haleep Bureau in exchange for �188,000. When questioned, he denied knowledge of the money under his seat and maintained that he was on his way to Dusseldorf to buy showrooms. It appears that the officers allowed him to proceed.
On 11 th March 2000, when the three conspiracies came to an end on the arrest of the alleged conspirators, customs officers stopped Navtej and Jasvir at Felixstowe and Dover respectively, each with a large quantity of Dutch guilders in his possession, the subjects of counts 2 and 3. On the same day officers arrested the appellant at a party. He denied that he was Rana Singh, that his wife was there with him and that it was his car outside. Later, in interview, he maintained his earlier denial of any knowledge of the guilders found in the car on 13 th July 199He acknowledged that he had visited Mr. Sharif's bureaux de change, sometimes with Dhaliwal because he was a friend and sometimes on his own when Dhaliwal had not turned up. He said that Navtej and Jasvir were Dhaliwal's couriers. He maintained that all the transactions at the bureaux were Dhaliwal's and denied any knowledge of money-laundering.
The Trial
On Sunday, 2 nd September 2001, the day before the start of the appellant's trial, he disappeared. On Monday, 3 rd September the Judge, on learning of that, issued a bench warrant for his arrest, and over the next three or four days, heard and determined various applications by the appellant's counsel, Mr. Ivan Krolick.
The most important of those applications for the purpose of this appeal was Mr. Krolick's applications to quash the indictment against the appellant. He relied on two arguments. First, he submitted that the charges, each containing as an averment that the accused knew or had reasonable grounds to suspect that certain property was the proceeds of drug trafficking and/or crime was void for duplicity. He maintained that it could not amount to a statutory conspiracy within section 1(1) of the 1977 Act because it charged two mutually exclusive offences �it was not clear on the facts which �namely money laundering of the proceeds of drug trafficking or money-laundering of the proceeds of some other, unspecified crime. Second, he submitted that the words in the particulars, "knowing or having reasonable grounds to suspect" that the proceeds in question were such proceeds, whilst a sufficient allegation in a substantive charge under the 1994 Act or the 1988 Act, were insufficient for a charge of conspiracy to commit them. Greater precision in the indictment was important, urged Mr. Krolick, because of the effect, otherwise, of the uncertainty of the jury's verdict as to which Act was engaged, on sentence and on any subsequent confiscation proceedings. He relied on R v. Roberts & Ors. (1998) 1 Cr App R 441 and R v. Siracusa & Ors. (1990) 90 Cr App R 340.]
Mr Jonathan Gosling, for the prosecution, argued that there was no duplicity and that the particulars correctly identified the mens rea required to prove each of the conspiracies, relying on observations of this Court in R v. El Kurd (unreported: No. 9901854823, 26th July...
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