Man jailed for role in £266m money laundering scam
West Yorkshire PoliceA man has been jailed for eight years for his role in helping to launder £266m of criminal cash through a scrap jewellery firm.
Samir Jagirdar, 58, used his London-based firm Pure Nines as a front to deliver cash to Fowler Oldfield in Bradford. The money was then used to buy gold grain that was exported to Dubai with fake invoices.
West Yorkshire Police said the investigation into the racket was the largest into the laundering of criminal cash in UK legal history.
On Monday, Jagirdar, of Addiscombe Road, Croydon, was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court after previously pleading guilty to money laundering between 2012 and 2016.
He was also banned from being a company director.
Jagirdar is the seventh defendant to be sentenced in connection with the fraud. Four men were jailed in March 2025, while two others were handed custodial sentences in August.
On that occasion, Leeds Crown Court was told police began investigating Fowler Oldfield in 2016 after a security company raised concerns about the huge daily increase in money being collected from the premises.
West Yorkshire PoliceBank checks found the amount of cash flowing into the company's accounts had increased from £11,000 in 2012 to more than £650,000 a year later.
In September 2016 officers searched Fowler Oldfield's premises and two businesses in London, including Pure Nines Ltd in Hatton Garden, and arrested 16 people and recovered cash and gold to the value of more than £4m.
A total of 146 bars of fake gold were found at Pure Nines Ltd, which officers said was to give the appearance of the business being a "legitimate gold dealer rather than a front for money laundering".
Police said officers found an automated cash counting machine and bundles of cash in a safe as well as 147 bars of fake gold, which they said was used "to give the appearance of the business being a legitimate gold dealer rather than a front for money laundering".
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