An airline check-in girl has admitted helping a crime gang smuggle millions of pounds through Manchester Airport to Dubai so she could splash the cash on designer goods and a boob job.
Emma Rauf, 33, who worked for Emirates, changed her plea to guilty after initially denying one count of entering into a money laundering arrangement to remove cash from the UK.
Bolton Crown Court heard she abused her position at the airline’s check-in desk to waive hundreds of pounds of excess baggage fees for couriers who smuggled large amounts of used bank notes hidden in clothes in suitcases to the UAE city.
Over nearly two years, from December 2017, the gang allegedly moved up to £30 million from the UK to Dubai via a series of flights, with mules taking up to five suitcases at a time.
The jury was shown videos allegedly sent by Rauf to relatives showing off a Louis Vuitton handbag, Valentino shoes and a diamond ring and Rolex watch inside a Bentley.
They also heard messages that showed Rauf allegedly had cosmetic breast surgery paid for by her role in the crime.
Bill Baker KC, prosecuting, said Rauf was prepared to risk her job at the airline to ‘enjoy the lifestyle’ that was brought by commissions on the laundered cash.
He said: ‘The lure of designer goods and expensive watches was no doubt her motivation for involving herself in very serious organised crime.’
Mr Baker said couriers failed to declare any of the cash at Manchester and Birmingham airports, despite a legal requirement to do so for sums of over 10,000 Euros.
Some of the sums, which varied from about £100,000 to £667,949 were declared upon arrival in Dubai, where there are no checks as to the origins of the money, before it was paid into bank accounts to launder the cash.
Mr Baker KC told the court that the total amount of declarations made to Dubai customs by the couriers was just under £14 million over more than 135 return flights.
Mr Baker said: ‘When (Rauf) was working on the check-in desk for flights to Dubai, she checked in her co-defendants without requiring them to pay for their excess baggage.
‘When she was not working on the check-in desk, she asked her colleagues who were working, to check in her co-defendants without paying for their excess baggage.’
The court heard that Rauf, of Wilmslow, Cheshire, also flew to and from Dubai eight times over a period of just five months, but never declared any cash upon arrival.
He said: ‘(The group) probably took out up to £30m as just over half was not declared and, on non-declared flights, they still took suitcases and phone messages showed there was money but some of it was not declared.’
The money involved came from major organised criminals involved in the supply of drugs in the north of England, the court heard.
The jury was told the alleged ringleader, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is now believed to be in Dubai after he failed to attend the trial.
He allegedly made 30 return trips to Dubai himself before recruiting others, who were often flown out in business class seats and treated to visits to high-end nightclubs and restaurants, including Salt Bay, which serves steaks with gold leaf.
In one 24-hour period alone a total of more than £1.6 million was smuggled by three couriers, the court heard.
‘(The organiser arranged for) the defendants to pick up huge sums of cash generated by crime in this country and smuggle it to Dubai,’ Mr Baker said.
‘They smuggled the cash hidden in clothes in suitcases they carried onto commercial flights.
‘None of the cash was declared to the authorities in this country on leaving as the law required it to be.
‘On arrival in Dubai some of the cash was declared to the authorities, as they carried out no investigation of where it had come from.’
But the operation began to unravel after some of the money was discovered and seized before it left Britain.
A total of £788,455 in cash was seized at UK airports, prompting a major probe by the National Crime Agency.
Mr Baker said the operation also brought major risks to Rauf’s family after some of the money went missing while under her control.
Rauf’s brother Ben Royle, 31, formerly of Wilmslow, and his friend Sheikh Jobe, 33, from Manchester, have also pleaded guilty to money laundering and are due to be sentenced at the end of the trial.
The court heard Royle’s partner, Phoebe Adamson, who is not implicated in the offending, was left terrified when three men in ski masks tried to break into his Manchester flat, where he had stored £500,000, while she was there alone.
Rauf’s parents’ home was also shot at after £406,500 left in the boot of her car on the drive was stolen overnight.
Mr Baker said the criminal owner of the missing cash ordered Rauf and her brother to take lie detector tests to try to find its whereabouts and warned them whoever took it would get a ‘bullet through the head.’
When Rauf refused, several bullets were fired through the front door and lounge window of the family home, in Hale, Cheshire, by a man on a motorbike.
Rauf was later seen taking ‘full’ bags to a safety deposit box in Manchester City Centre, the court heard.
Alleged couriers Sophie Logan, 30, from Dubai but formerly of Derby, Devanyl Graham, 26, from Dewsbury, plus Heather Jeffrey, 58, and her children Sheldan Noel, 30, and Lamara Noel, 34, all from Bradford, are all on trial for allegedly flying the cash out of the UK.
The trial continues.
