A company director has been jailed for his part in a £266m Bradford money laundering operation which police said was one of the biggest investigations of its kind in UK legal history.
Samir Jagirdar, 58, ran Pure Nines, a company based in London’s Hatton Garden.
His company was a front for the delivery of cash to Bradford-based jewellers Fowler Oldfield, and the purchase of gold which was then shipped to Dubai using fake invoices.
Jagirdar admitted money laundering, which happened between 2012 and 2016, at an earlier hearing.
He was jailed for seven years at Leeds Crown Court on October 12 and banned from being a company director.
Most of the money being directed to Fowler Oldfield by 2016 was shown to have been sent there by Shahid Qadar, who was described at a previous hearing as an international money launderer based in Dubai.
Pure Nines Ltd, set up by Jagirdar, was used as a front for delivering cash to Fowler Oldfield and purchasing and exporting the "clean" gold.
Jagirdar's brother-in-law, Baqa Haider, was also involved, with the two men creating fake shipping invoices and travelling to Dubai to export and deliver the gold.
The investigation into Fowler Oldfield began in 2016 after a security company raised concerns about a huge increase in the amount of cash its staff were collecting from the premises.
The long-established company had legitimately bought scrap jewellery, including gold, for cash, but police said its business model had changed dramatically to processing cash on a large scale.
In March 2025, four men were handed prison sentences after being convicted of money laundering following a trial at Leeds Crown Court.
Fowler Oldfield director Daniel Rawson, 49, of Syke Green, Scarcroft, was sentenced to ten years and ten months in prison.
Fellow director Gregory Frankel, 48, from Shipley, was sentenced in his absence to 11 years and eight months.
Haroon Rashid, 56, of Toller Lane, Bradford, was sentenced in his absence to ten years, while Arjun Babber, 34, of Trevor Place, Westminster, was handed an 11-year sentence in his absence.
Frankel, Rashid and Babber are believed to have left the country. Police are continuing efforts to locate them and secure their extradition to the UK.
Following a further trial which concluded in July this year, Haider and Fowler Oldfield staff member Nathan Rivers were convicted of money laundering.
Haider was jailed for six years.
Rivers was given a 27-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, with a curfew requirement.
Banking enquiries showed cash coming into the company's accounts had risen from £11,000 in 2012 to more than £650,000 the following year.
By 2015, payments into the company had risen to £95 million.
Surveillance by investigators showed couriers regularly arriving at Fowler Oldfield's premises on Hall Lane in Bradford carrying large bags of cash.
At times, the money was being processed at a rate of £1.7 million a day.
The cash was banked by Fowler Oldfield and used to purchase high-purity gold grain, which was then shipped to Dubai under fake shipping invoices.
Police said the process gave apparent legitimacy to criminal proceeds while helping those behind the cash avoid checks they would have faced if they had attempted to bank the money or buy gold themselves.
In September 2016, officers executed search warrants at Fowler Oldfield and two businesses in London, including Pure Nines.
A total of 16 people were arrested and cash and gold worth more than £4 million were recovered.
Internal CCTV from Fowler Oldfield showed staff processing large amounts of bank notes through automated counting machines before packing the cash for collection by legitimate cash-in-transit companies.
At Pure Nines, investigators found evidence the premises were mainly being used to count cash rather than for genuine gold trading.
Officers discovered a holdall filled with cash, an automated counting machine and bundles of money in a safe and on a worktop.
They also found what appeared to be 147 gold bars in the safe.
On closer examination, however, police found only one was actually gold, while the remaining bars were less valuable silver which had been gold-plated.
West Yorkshire Police's Economic Crime Unit went on to conduct years of detailed analysis, including examining invoices, emails and paperwork and studying more than 8,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Investigators calculated that more than £266 million had been paid into Fowler Oldfield's accounts between January 2014 and September 2016.
In December 2021, NatWest was fined £264,772,619.95 following a Financial Conduct Authority prosecution for failing to comply with money laundering regulations in relation to its monitoring of Fowler Oldfield's banking activities between November 2012 and June 2016.
Money laundering charges were subsequently brought against a number of defendants following work between West Yorkshire Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.