Lawyer jailed for money laundering

Duty evaded on hundreds of van and lorry loads

A solicitor who helped launder £30m for a jailed bootleg baron has been sent to prison for seven years.

In an extensive operation that lasted years, Louis Glatt, 54, systematically set up companies and off-shore accounts to clean up vast sums of "dirty money" for his client.

He was also instrumental in enabling Ellis Martin, a "premier league fraudster", to keep running his illicit and highly lucrative empire under the noses of prison officers, London's Southwark Crown Court heard.

By Glatt's intervention, Martin was able to protect the millions of pounds of profits he made from selling smuggled alcohol and tobacco.

Glatt, of Finchley, north London, prepared "utterly deceitful" letters of introduction for Martin's underworld cronies so that he could do business with them face-to-face within the confines of prison.

They posed as solicitors' clerks making private legal visits, which the authorities believed to be legitimate to help him prepare his appeal against conviction.

Deceitful operation

But instead of receiving legal advice, Martin happily played the role of "chairman of the board", pulling the strings of his international criminal empire and doling out orders to his minions.

Passing sentence, Judge Christopher Elwen told Glatt: "You entered into an agreement with Martin and others to put beyond the prying eyes of the authorities very large amounts of what should otherwise have been tax payers' money.

"On his instructions you acquired properties and businesses with the proceeds of his criminal conduct.

"You lied to the prison authorities about the status of Martin's associates so they could attend him on closed, private legal visits so they could carry information to him and bring out instructions about the running of his criminal empire."

Ellis Martin was jailed for nine years in December 1999 for orchestrating the highly-lucrative bootlegging swindle which it is estimated cost the tax payer over £30m in lost revenue.