A drugs kingpin who amassed a £17m property fortune as part of a £180m drug money laundering gang is back behind bars after being caught with another mammoth hoard of heroin. Alam Zeb Khan was snared for a fourth time after National Crime Agency officers raided a flat in Small Heath, Birmingham, after surveillance teams had watched the 49-year-old crook enter it carrying a large brown shopping bag. Inside the flat officers found two heroin users along with Khan, whose shopping bag with the drugs he was peddling had just shy of two kilos of heroin in it. A search of the premises uncovered a further seven kilos of heroin hidden with a potential street value of £1.5million.
Khan’s first conviction was 30 years ago when he was convicted of possession of heroin with intent to supply. In 2000, he was convicted of heroin smuggling and sentenced to 12 years. After serving that sentence he returned to offending and was again jailed for seven years in 2012 for a cocaine supply plot.
Khan, together with his family and their associates, was also ordered to surrender a £17m property portfolio in 2020.
An eight-year NCA investigation established the properties were acquired using the proceeds of crime, including heroin trafficking and money laundering, and Khan’s family ordered by to give up homes in Birmingham and Northern Ireland.
Khan was a key part of the gang of 32 men jailed for a total 140 years for £180m drug money laundering scam.
The High Court ruled Khan’s relatives must hand their properties over to the National Crime Agency, because they were bought with the proceeds from his criminal activities.
The huge money laundering scam saw a staggering £44 million deposited into a single bank in Small Heath.
The racket was smashed by National Crime Agency officers, who filmed bags of cash being exchanged in Birmingham.
Criminally tainted money was said to have been used to build a substantial £17m portfolio in the names of relatives including Alam Zeb Khan’s wife Jamila Shabnam and Northern Ireland-based brother Aurang Khan and sister-in-law Shakar Begum.
The £180m scam was described in court in 2014 as “one of the most significant money laundering networks seen in the UK”
Khan’s brother Ameran Zeb Khan was deemed to be the ringleader of the gang who conspired to smuggle £19 million of heroin into the UK from Pakistan.
The National Crime Agency subsequently seized 59 properties worth a total of £17 after spending more than eight years dismantling the Brimangham-based organised crime gang’s network of properties.
Most of the properties were residential homes including a £235,000 house in Birmingham and also a gym named Rampage Fitness along with three properties in the seaside resort of Bangor, Co Down. Two other properties consisted of seven and five apartments.
The majority of the 59 properties recovered were private residential properties that were rented out in the Bordesley Green and Selly Oak areas of Birmingham.
Judge Mrs Justice O’Farrell said: “The properties have been acquired, held and transferred by various family members without any identifiable source of income.
“The only plausible explanation for acquisition of the properties and the convoluted way in which the defendants have dealt with the properties, is that the funds used are proceeds of crime, namely drug dealing, money laundering, mortgage fraud and tax evasion.”
However the family denied they were part of a wider criminal network associated with Khan.
They also insisted the property transactions were part of the way business is conducted between members of an Anglo-Pakistani family.
Following Khan’s latest conviction Rick Mackenzie, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “Alam Zeb Khan is a career criminal who has dedicated his life to breaking the law.
“He has wrecked his own life and his heroin dealing has wrecked the lives of others.
“The drugs trade is a scourge to society, claiming thousands of lives every year and bringing violence, exploitation and fear to our communities.
“Seizing harmful drugs from the criminal supply chain and bringing offenders like Khan to justice is a key part of our mission to protect the public from serious and organised crime.”