UK’s £50m mortgage fraud case

 

LONDON: When British Pakistani Saghir Afzal was about to be sentenced on June 14, 2011, for his alleged role in Britain’s biggest-ever £50 million mortgage fraud case, he told the court at the last minute that he wanted to change his plea to innocent.

On June 13, 2011 — following the trial of seven co-accused who were all cleared — Saghir Afzal applied to vacate his guilty pleas.

His application was refused and he was unrepresented at the time of sentencing. To everyone's surprise, Saghir told Judge Beddoe that he had pleaded guilty to the charges under extreme duress to save his brother Nisar Afzal’s life who was kidnapped in Rawalpindi on January 6, 2011, by a gang. He claimed that his brother was kidnapped so he pleaded guilty.

The case is unlike any other as it involves a complex and controversial mortgage investigation involving two high-profile Pakistani families from West Midlands and London. Apart from the mortgage, the case also included a shooting incident, a kidnapping in Pakistan, seizure of money and jewellery worth millions of pounds, and a racist attack on a Pakistani woman by one of the leading case handlers.

The court did not believe Saghir’s account when he asserted that he had made the guilty plea under duress and sentenced him.

After completing his sentence, Saghir will be freed from Category C Oakwood prison. When he comes out as a free person,  Saghir will be a bankrupt person.

What is the case?

The facts of the case are very interesting, similar to a Hollywood movie script.

Saghir was investigated by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO) for alleged mortgage fraud of £49 million along with his brother, Nisar. The fraud allegedly took place between April 1, 2004, and January 15, 2006.

The prosecution had alleged that the Afzal brothers "dishonestly obtained loans from banks and building societies for six real estate properties estimated to be £7 million." They added that companies controlled by the Afzal brothers had "transferred each property at highly inflated prices."

The prosecution contended that the Afzal brothers "obtained mortgage advances totalling £49,276,250 based on the inflated price."

UK authorities arrested Saghir on 13 July 2006 and charged him on December 7, 2009, with six offences. He had initially pleaded not guilty but later changed his plea when Nisar was kidnapped in Pakistan on January 10, 2011.

On 17 January 2011, Saghir was convicted of conspiracy to obtain money transfers by deception and was sentenced to 13 years on June 14, 2011.

On the other hand, Nisar Afzal was released by his kidnappers on 18 January 2011 once the guilty plea was secured.

On the other hand, misery for Saghir continued when a confiscation order was passed on August 20, 2012, for an amount exceeding £29 million. As Saghir did not have the money to pay, he was sentenced to an additional 10 years.

Following the decision, Saghir appealed his conviction on March 22, 2013. He asserted that he only pleaded guilty because Nisar was kidnapped. The Court of Appeal did not accept Saghir’s explanation and relied on what he had said in a hearing on June 13 2011. Saghir had urged the court that he had mentioned Nisar’s kidnapping in the June 13, 2011, hearing but his appeal was rejected.

Case far from over

However, new facts and twists in Britain's biggest-ever mortgage fraud case have come to the fore. The new details raise questions about whether all facts were taken into consideration by the SFO investigators.

Saghir Afzal and surveyor expert Ian McGarry were charged along with six solicitors in 2007 who conducted the property transactions. However, during the trial, three solicitors were acquitted and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on the other three.

Despite Saghir’s conviction, the case seems far from over.

In 2006, Saghir’s brother Nisar had left for Pakistan after investigators of the National Crime Agency (NCA) and SFO started their inquiries.

The SFO’s main case was against Nisar who had not returned to the UK after 2006 and offered to assist the investigation from Pakistan. He had made the offer after he was assured by the SFO that it would conduct an impartial inquiry and will investigate some individuals who were central to the case but they were never probed.

The SFO said it was working with Pakistan’s National Accountability Bureau (NAB) and would like to extradite Nisar from Pakistan but nothing happened.

However, Nisar offered to the NCA that he was happy to return to the UK to face the charges only if the SFO investigates the various aspects of the case that were ignored but were crucial to his defence. The SFO refused the offer and insisted that Nisar must return to the UK first. Nisar’s lawyers had advised him not to return to the UK.

The SFO announced in late 2021 that it has dropped its investigation into Nisar. The fraud office also lifted restraining orders on his assets and declared that he was no more a person of interest in the mortgage fraud case.

Nisar’s lawyer contend that the SFO took the decision due to a lack of evidence.

In March 2019, the NCA and SFO had told NAB that they believed Nisar had taken around £26 million to Pakistan. The office had failed to provide evidence against Nisar but offered NAB that if Pakistan seizes Nisar’s assets, it can keep half of the £26 million.

In September 2010, Nisar was arrested in Pakistan on allegations of being involved in a shooting incident but the charges were dropped after Saghir had pleaded guilty. In 2007, Saghir Afzal’s son was arrested in Pakistan on false allegations of drug trafficking, the case was probed till Saghir pleaded guilty and then the charges were dropped.

On the other hand, a high-profile investigation led by Rawalpindi city police officer found that Nisar was kidnapped on January 6, 2011, and kept in detention until Saghir had pleaded guilty.

The Afzal brothers have consistently asked the SFO to speak to the Pakistani police about the 2011 kidnapping but the UK agency has refused and instead demanded Nisar’s return to the UK.

Rawalpindi CPO’s investigation

The then city police officer of Rawalpindi had told inspector-general Punjab Police in July 2011 that Nisar’s son, Akash Afzal, had actually reported to the police that his father was abducted by three men.

Akash had named Haji Azram and others as suspects in the case. He had informed the police that his family had a case going on with them in London and were “pressurising the family from every side”.

In the report, the Rawalpindi CPO said that Nisar and six others, including police officers, had appeared before the inquiry committee.

The inquiry confirmed that Nisar was kidnapped by unidentified men while he was travelling from Kohat to Islamabad.

“It is proved that Nisar Afzal was kidnapped, no ransom was demanded to release the victim and visitation of Akash Afzal along with Haji Muhammad Azam to the Police Station for the report is correct to the same extent,” said the report.

In August 2021, Pakistan’s Interior Ministry. in a report. also confirmed Nisar’s abduction and his release on January 18, 2011. It added that no ransom was demanded or paid by the victim.

“Victim made a statement to the police that he was abducted to extract a guilty plea from his brother in the UK and thereafter he was released,” said the interior ministry.

Shahzad Akbar’s campaign for Afzal brothers

In 2014 and 2015, PM Imran Khan’s former advisor on accountability Shahzad Akbar ran a campaign on behalf of Nisar.

Akbar had written several letters to UK ministers and parliamentarians stating that there were "serious flaws in the Afzal brothers case" and urged them that the case should be heard with full facts.

The former advisor had run the campaign from Foundation for Fundamental Rights and had written to then Home Secretary Theresa May, Sayeeda Warsi, Gisela Stuart, Naz Shah, Damian Green, UK’s Ministry of Justice.

That effort went in vain as all parliamentarians expressed their inability to do anything about judicial matters.

Saghir’s appeal

In March 2013, Saghir had filed his appeal before the UK Court of Appeal’s Criminal Division before three judges on the grounds that his guilt was forced out of him.

Ahead of the appeal hearing, in January 2013 Saghir’s son, Asim, was attacked in Birmingham, according to records of the West Midlands Police.

Asim had told the police that he had received threats from unidentified criminals and that they had also attacked one of the family’s businesses. He had also stated that the men had warned further violence would follow unless his father withdraws his appeal.

Despite the attack on his family, Saghir went ahead with his appeal and contended that he pleaded guilty in the first instance due to the threats his family faced in Pakistan and because his counsel had advised him to plead guilty.

Saghir’s former lawyer had accepted before the court that he had advised him to plead guilty but denied putting pressure on him to plead guilty.

The court said that the fresh evidence on which Saghir was relying on statements obtained by himself, his UK family, and witnesses that reside in Pakistan.

The judges had also questioned why Saghir had not brought up the issue of threats in Pakistan and kidnapping to the attention of the English court around the time of his conviction in January 2011.

On that basis, the judges refused Saghir’s application against his conviction and maintained the original conviction decision at the Crown court.

Ten years later, the Rawalpindi Police at the senior level has confirmed that Nisar was kidnapped, the NCA has dropped all charges against him and lifted restraining orders on him and now Nisar is involved in litigation to reclaim some of his assets at the same time Saghir’s time in jail is also coming to an end.

Soon he will be a free man, several of those who were involved in the plot were never investigated or charged and some were not convicted due to a lack of evidence or at the judge’s direction. His fellow convict Ian McGarry is already out.

Saghir and Nisar maintain they are "victims of abuse of power and have been singled out." They say that the SFO had failed to properly investigate Abdul Ajram who, they allege, was the one involved in the case.

The SFO says it did the proper investigation and brought charges based on evidence. However, the SFO has refused to answer questions on why its officers ill-treated family members of the Afzal brothers and why no action was taken against a senior SFO official who was involved in abusing Nisar Afzal’s ex-wife Shabana Kausar.

Saghir maintains that he was never involved in the mortgage fraud conspiracy and was laundered through it by some people who played the system. He says that he was made an example just because the whole system was flawed.