home

Home

News

Sport

TV&Showbiz

Femail

Health

Science&Tech

Money

Debate

Coffee
Break

Property

Motoring

Travel

You
mag

Live mag

Books

Food

Gardening

Promos

Mailshop

MailCompare

Bingo

Blogs

Columnists

Dating

Horoscopes

My Profile

Logout

Login

Find a Job Dating Wine E-Editions Feedback My Stories

Thursday, Oct 29 2009 This
Morning  16°C   This
Afternoon 17°C   5-Day Forecast

The raid that
rocked the Met: Why gun and drugs op on 6,717 safety deposit boxes could cost
taxpayer a fortune

More than 500 officers smashed their way into thousands
of safety-deposit boxes to retrieve guns, drugs and millions of pounds of
criminal assets. At least, that's what was supposed to happen. Adrian Levy and
Cathy Scott-Clark investigate

By ADRIAN LEVY and CATHY SCOTT-CLARK

Last updated at 11:23 PM on 24th October 2009

Comments (44)

Add to
My Stories

Operation Rize: An officer uses an angle grinder to open
lockers containing safety-deposit boxes

The Finchley Road is one of the busiest thoroughfares heading out of London. It leads traffic north past Lord's Cricket
Ground and the multimillion-pound houses of some of the country's richest
hedge-fund managers all the way to the M1. At three in the afternoon it's always
pretty slow going, but on this particular summer Monday the traffic was almost
at a standstill.

This was partly because the normal three lanes going north had been cut down
to one. But it was also because of drivers slowing down to a crawl so they could
gawp at the massive police operation unfolding on a busy corner of the road.

Police vehicles - both cars and menacing armoured trucks - jammed up two
lanes. Dozens of armed officers in bulletproof vests were standing ready,
waiting to be called inside an anonymous-looking building. From the sheer
manpower and weapons on display it looked like the capital was under another
terrorist attack.

But while this was the Metropolitan Police's most ambitious operation in its
180-year history, it had nothing to do with national security. Only hours
before, at a special briefing, teams from SCD6 (the Economic And Specialist
Crime unit) and C019 (Specialist Firearms Command) hunkered down with
technicians armed with angle grinders and drills. Also present were dog
handlers, their animals trained to sniff out guns, drugs and explosives.

In all, more than 500 officers had gathered to receive orders to raid smart
addresses in well-heeled parts of the capital. The locations included three of
Britain's largest and most well-established safety-deposit box depositories in
Edgware, Hampstead and Park Lane as well as an office and the homes of the
three directors of Safe Deposit Centres Ltd, which owned the vaults - two in
Hampstead and one in Barnet.

For most of those at the briefing, arriving just before 3pm on June 2 last
year, this was the first they had heard of the operation. Secrecy had been
paramount and, with so many involved, keeping the operation 'airtight' had been
one of the largest headaches in the pre-planning for what was codenamed 'Rize'.

The police rolled through London in a convoy: scores of patrol cars,
armed-response vehicles, outriders on their bikes, vans with their windows
shielded by metal cages. With a Met film unit recording everything, detectives
forced their way past startled security guards, demanding receptionists open the
secure doors that led to the normally hushed strong rooms, which in the three
centres housed 6,717 safety deposit boxes.

Cash found in deposit boxes. More than £53 million in cash
was impounded, some of it stuffed into supermarket bags

Over the next few hours, the three depositories were transformed into
makeshift evidence-sorting centres, decked out with tables to bear the contents
of the safety-deposit boxes that were soon to be forced open. Within a day, the
first stage of the operation was finished but it would take over ten more to
complete the next intricate and prolonged phase.

Investigators wearing gas masks and blue overhauls used power tools to chop
away at the locked doors that protected the boxes themselves. They had rehearsed
this bit for many hours, on mockups, trying numerous methods to get quickly and
safely at the deposit boxes.

Forged passports found in deposit boxes

Diamond drill bits forced down into the locks proved disastrous, potentially
damaging evidence inside. Instead, they settled on Makita angle grinders, with
which they now effortlessly hacked at the hinges, allowing them to slide out
the individual strong boxes, some as small as an A4 pad. Larger ones required a
more bullish approach - strong-arm tactics that the police maintained were
essential as key-holders would have been unlikely to co-operate.

As the first of the boxes was opened, detectives began probing the contents.
Many were spilling over with bank notes and jewellery. Each was given a rough
designation - for instance, 'cash' or 'gun' - and the words scribbled onto
labels before they were placed in sealed evidence bags that were loaded into
vans and given an armed escort to their final and secret destination, a secure
counting house.

Here, every one of the thousands of boxes was to be intimately scrutinised.
Not only did detectives have to itemise what they had found but match the
contents to a person.

A few of the box-holders' identities had been acquired through months of
police surveillance. Others were revealed in vault registers seized by police
during the raid. Some used aliases and would be hard to track down; more still
would be identified by scrutinising the vaults' CCTV cameras. Sixty officers
would sift, analyse and count until November 2008 and beyond, racking up £1.4
million in overtime bills alone.

There was a lot at stake. Never before had the British police been granted a
warrant as broad as this. The raids had been made possible under a controversial
law, the Proceeds Of Crime Act (POCA), which came into being in 2002 and
introduced an array of wide-ranging new powers to seek out and confiscate dirty
money - the houses, cars and boats bought by criminals.

However, lawyers watching the police operation unfold were quick to warn that
the strong-arming of these vaults and the crashing into each and every box was
tantamount to the police having obtained permission to smash down the doors of
an entire housing estate.

David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, one of the largest criminal defence
practices in London, says, 'POCA was never intended for this. No one objects
when criminals are caught and their assets seized - but shaking down everyone to
get to them is specifically not what lawmakers wanted.'

A handgun belonging to a suspected drug dealer(left) and
items seized include police riot gear, guns and swords (right)

Aware of the controversy, Scotland Yard went on a charm offensive, with Assistant
Commissioner John Yates giving a series of briefings.

'This is a huge operation to tackle criminal networks who we believe are
using safe deposit facilities to hide assets,' he reassured the media.

The raids had come after 18 months of scrupulous intelligence gathering that
had led detectives to suspect the vault owners were turning a blind eye to the
worst kinds of criminality, enabling major villains to conceal, transport and
launder their ill-gotten gains, said Yates. Brushing aside concerns about the
invasion of privacy, he asserted that 'the majority' of the boxes seized
belonged to criminals.

Evidence was soon put on show that seemed to underscore his position. More
than £53 million in cash was impounded, some of it stuffed into supermarket
bags. Most of the money, said the Met, was 'the proceeds of armed robberies and
international drug trafficking'.

Unnamed Yard sources speculated that some had come from the 2006 Securitas
depot robbery in Tonbridge, Kent, and that a mysterious haul of gold grains
wrapped in plastic and squashed inside suitcases could be linked to the Brinks
Matt heist of 1983. There were sufficient diamonds and pearls to string up as
bunting for a street party.

CCTV footage of Gavin Leon, whose box held a Glock
handgun

In one box in Edgware, bags of white powder when tested turned out to be 140g
of 81 per cent pure cocaine. Lying next to it was £62,500 in cash. Another box,
crammed with notes, was identified as belonging to a Russian woman whose
boyfriend was the son of a convicted major-league drugs dealer.

A semi-automatic Glock 9mm, the weapon of choice for British gangsters, was
lodged in Box 1653 at the Hampstead depository, rented by 44-year-old Gavin
Leon, who was jailed for five years last March. A Brocock firearm and nine
rounds of ammunition, together with £20,000 in cash, some heroin and weighing
scales had been deposited in a box belonging to John Derriviere, a 47-year-old
who is now wanted by police.

A £100,000 stash left in a box in Edgware turned out to belong to convicted
drug dealer David Wilson, 38, from Dagenham, a nest egg he intended to
collect after completing a 24-month sentence. Scrutinising the vault's CCTV,
police also identified drug trafficker Yaset Berhane, 27, whose box contained
£122,000 in cash, some of it marked by Sussex Police in an earlier drugs sting,
leading to Berhane's jailing in March 2009 for drug trafficking and money
laundering.

When vice-squad detectives raided five premises connected to a southeast
Asian businesswoman who had more than £100,000 in cash in one box, they found
brothels worked by girls who had all potentially been trafficked to the UK, as
well as a string of foreign bank transactions showing £800,000 flowing out of
the UK. In the months after Rize there were more than 40 arrests and 11
prosecutions.

However, by talking to scores of box-holders, none of whom have spoken
before, Live has uncovered a different
version of Operation Rize, one that shows how the vast majority of those caught
up in the raids were innocent. They have had their lives turned upside down over
the past 17 months. Many have struggled to recoup their money and possessions,
been forced into legal trench warfare with police lawyers and told they must
prove how they came by the contents of their boxes.

This is also a story told through secret legal papers, including
confidentiality agreements struck with some vault depositors whose cases
threatened to topple the entire operation. Although the police told a judge that
'nine out of ten' of all of the thousands of box-holders were probably
criminally minded, criminally connected or felons, the paper trail reveals that
perhaps only as few as ten per cent of the boxes have any connection to serious
crime.

More worryingly, according to eminent lawyers and barristers, Operation Rize
has seen the Yard employ unethical tactics, driving a coach and horses through
the new POCA legislation, leaving the Met facing a raft of legal actions that
could potentially cost taxpayers millions of pounds.

The police raid at Hampstead. Never before had the British
police been granted a warrant as broad as this

'Rize is a juggernaut veering out of control,' said one barrister who helped
advise on POCA during its passage through Parliament, 'and now a sharp tool that
we badly needed to drain criminal cash has been tarnished, potentially damaging
it and inhibiting its use'.

Within days of the raids, the police set up a helpline to deal with potential
inquiries. They were overwhelmed by the response. One detective told Live: 'Everyone presumed we had bagged a load
of villains who would not dare claim their iffy property. But thousands of the
box-holders complained.'

Some of the box-holders contacted lawyers. These were people far removed from
the criminal underworld. Many had been with the company from the beginning,
drawn to the likeable Jewish businessman who ran it. Leslie Sieff founded the
company in 1986, although by the time Operation Rize unfurled he'd been bought
out by developer Milton Woolf.

In
one box there was 140g and cocaine and £62,500 in cash beside it... In another,
a Glock 9mm, the weapon of choice for British gangsters

Many of the clientele were families who had fled turmoil, pogroms, coups and
wars and long had a cultural preference for locking away money and jewels,
building up a vehement distrust for the integrity of traditional banks. Here,
stepping down the spiral staircase at the back to the darkened boxes below, they
felt reassured that their most important possessions were safe.

One survivor of Nazi Germany in his seventies told us how he had placed a bag of
diamonds there - security if ever he or his descendents needed to run again.

'My wife and I had escaped from Germany with nothing but these gems,' he
said. 'She sewed them into our clothing before we crossed occupied Europe, reaching Britain by ship when the jewels were snipped
out and locked up.'

There was a rabbi too, Yitzchak Schochet, of Mill Hill Synagogue, who said:
'Safety deposit boxes are supposed to be confidential. The whole situation was
very unsettling and an intrusion of privacy.'

Another client, an Indian millionaire entrepreneur with connections to the House of Lords, described how he was 'treated like a convicted
man just because I had wealth in cash'.

A Hindu priest described to Live how his family's valuables had been carried
in the Sixties from Madhya Pradesh, India, to London 'in a gunny sack'.

Among the possessions seized by the police were elaborate handcrafted
bracelets, gold rings set with uncut stones, and a bejewelled wedding tikka
ornament to be draped on the forehead of a new bride. 'These items had always
been in our family,' the priest said, 'We had cash in there too. But now we had
to prove how we bought them and where that money, saved over the years, had come
from.'

Officers painstakingly record the contents of the
safety-deposit boxes

Under POCA, the burden of proof lay with the box-holders. Finding evidence
for wartime treks across Europe, or charting migration stories from the
Partition of India and beyond, would cost many of the box-holders tens of
thousands of pounds.

Mark Richardson, a former military intelligence officer and now a forensic
accountant, who has been employed by several box-holders to explain their
wealth, told us: 'We had to get one family's diamonds carbon-dated at great
expense to demonstrate to the police that they had been cut in the Thirties,
which tallied with their story of fleeing Germany before World War II.'

Lawyer Sara Teasdale, of City practice Roiter Zucker, whose client had kept
more than £900,000 in his box at the vaults in Edgware as cash flow for his
business leasing black cabs, said: 'The police are "deep-pocketing" - hauling
people through a protracted legal process that they know is so costly that most
will roll over.'

One angry box-holder rented Box 73 at the Park Lane depository. Alexander
Temerko, formerly a vice president of Russian oil giant Yukos, whose billionaire
boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky had fallen foul of President Putin, had fled to London
as Khodorkovsky was jailed for eight years in Russia.

When I got my box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller
items of jewellery were missing - a gold baby's bracelet and a gold
ring

On his arrival in the UK, Temerko had locked five crates of legal documents
into his safety-deposit box. However, as a result of Rize, the papers were now
in the hands of the Met, which claimed they were evidence of an alleged criminal
conspiracy whose participants were British, obliging the police to investigate.
Incandescent, Temerko hired an expensive lawyer, Ian Burton, of BCL Burton
Copeland. Burton recommended Clare Montgomery, a barrister from Cherie Blaire's
chambers, Matrix.

Within weeks of Operation Rize, Temerko's team set about applying for a
Judicial Review of the judge's decision to grant the controversial Rize warrant
and demanded the return of Temerko's files, which they claimed had been taken
unlawfully.

Montgomery and Burton highlighted case law that specifically stipulated
'fishing expeditions' were barred to the police, even under POCA. In other
words, the police were not allowed to seize property in the hope that it would
later prove to be criminal. The legal team also demanded sight of the police
evidence that had convinced the judge to issue the warrant in the first place.

Across town, in Camden, some less high-profile but equally infuriated
welltodo box-holders did the same. John and Estelle Selt, aged 62 and 73,
wealthy retired shopkeepers, had rented a box for 15 years. Inside it was
£150,000 and three valuable bracelets. Determined to clear their names, the
Selts put up the £50,000 needed to launch their own Judicial Review that also
focused on the lawfulness of the original warrant.

Following seven months of legal fencing, with the police guarding its Rize
file, the twin Judicial Reviews finally succeeded in prising from the Yard a
startling 32-page 'skeleton discussion'. This document - which we were able to
obtain after being given a case number by a senior source in Customs and then
trawling through court records at the Royal Court building - provides an
extraordinary insight into how the police managed to obtain a warrant for Rize.

The document provides a summary of two confidential meetings between the Met,
its legal advisors and the judge who signed the Rize warrant in May 2008. The
document revealed the Met had begun targeting Safe Deposit Centres Ltd in
January 2007, in an operation led by DCI Mark Ponting.

Armed police during the raid. In all, more than 500
officers had gathered to receive orders to raid smart addresses in well-heeled
parts of London

Using undercover officers posing as potential customers, Ponting's team of
detectives had drawn maps of the vault interiors and tried to determine the
number of clients and their identities. They also probed the rigour with which
the company enforced Financial Service Authority (FSA) guidelines on properly
identifying box-holders and keeping a watch out for anything suspicious.

Convinced that the vaults were part of a moneylaundering conspiracy, the Met
Commissioner had then asked for RIPA (Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act)
warrants to tap the phones of the vault's directors, as well as intercepting
their emails and letters - an operation completed by October 2007. Now the
police decided to raid, and in an unprecedented move they planned to break into
all of the deposit boxes simultaneously.

The Met hired Kennedy Talbot, one of Britain's most experienced barristers
dealing with POCA. Talbot approached a senior judge at Southwark Crown Court in
November 2007. But Southwark rejected the request. The police application was
also riddled with simple errors, according to the skeleton document, including a
claim by undercover officers that there were 18,000 boxes, three times the
actual number.

Police also named Leslie Sieff as a director, when available records showed
that he had sold the majority of his shareholding as far back as 1998 and would
soon resign as a director.

Undaunted, the Rize team tried again the following year. This time the Met
went out of London to a court that rarely heard complicated money-laundering
cases, putting their arguments before Judge Ken Macrae, in Croydon. In a
practice known as 'judge shopping', one that is lambasted by judges and lawyers
- though not illegal - the police hoped to get the right result by finding a
court more sympathetic to their goals and less up to speed with judicial debates
on the proportionality of a warrant.

David Sonn, of Sonn Macmillan Walker, says: 'This was highly unusual and
totally unethical.' The police should have gone back to Southwark. The Met has
refused to discuss why they went to Croydon stating simply: 'We will not discuss
details of the evidence relied upon for warrant applications.'

Having amended the number of safety-deposit boxes to a correct 6,717, and
after admitting 'there is a lot we don't know', the police claimed to have found
a shredded list behind one of the centres that when reconstituted revealed the
identities of boxholders. SCD6 had analysed it and concluded that in a sample of
391 names between '82 per cent and 90 per cent were suspicious or connected to
crime'.

A statistician was then hired who used this sample of only five per cent of
the total client base to conclude that nine out of ten of all of the thousands
of box-holders were probably criminally minded or felons, an opinion later
expressed more stridently with Judge Macrae, who was told that 'all of the boxes
might contain criminal property'. Macrae was swayed. He authorised a warrant
under POCA on May 30 2008.

Minutes had been taken of the judge's meetings with Talbot and Ponting. They
tell how the Rize plan had been rejected by one senior judge only to be put to a
second who was wooed with statistics rather than hard new evidence. Other court
documents obtained show that the legal teams preparing their judicial reviews
took the 32-page transcript to pieces and in so doing lambasted the whole Rize
operation.

'The warrant was extraordinarily broad,' Temerko's team warned, and
'completely unprecedented', representing the widest ever seen by lawyers in
Britain, one that on this ground alone was liable to be quashed by High Court
judges. The police had only provided the court with 'bare assertions' rather
than hard evidence.

A High Court judge was advised, 'The gross interference in privacy outweighed
any benefit to the investigation.'

The file concludes: 'This is a remarkable and untenable case of guilt by
association' that trampled on rights to privacy enshrined by Article 8 of the
European Convention of Human Rights. This guarantees all individuals the right
to privacy, barring states from intruding unless serious crimes have been
committed.

Siobhan Egan from lawyers Lewis Nedas added: 'The police had also made some
bizarre errors.' The POCA legislation barred the seizing of legal papers but
they had five crates belonging to Temerko.

The police changed course. They notified Temerko's legal team that they were
now acting under the Criminal Justice and Police Act, which allowed such
privileged documents to be held.

'However, this law can only be invoked when a written notice has been given
to everyone, box-holders and vault owners,' said Egan. Alerted, the police ran
around serving the directors of the Park Lane vault and their box-holders with
written notices - without realising that the law could not be applied
retrospectively, and that the notice had to be handed over 'at the time' of the
raids.

On June 4 2009, the Met caved in. Temerko was offered an agreement. In
exchange for dropping his Judicial Review, all five crates of his documents were
returned 'in sealed police evidence bags', with the police even agreeing to pay
his costs, as well as accounting for their own, a combined figure estimated at
more than £250,000. In return, the Russian agreed to keep 'the terms of this
consent order confidential'. His silence had been assured. The Selts won too. A
similar deal was offered to them, their goods returned and costs paid.

Statistics were by now causing the police significant problems. Mark Taylor, a former fraud investigator for HM
Customs and Excise, now an associate director of Vantis, an accountancy firm
advising families caught up in Operation Rize, kept a tally.

Of the 6,717 boxes targeted by detectives in the biggest raid in the Met's
history, just over half were occupied. And of those that were full, 2,838 boxes
were now handed back, a figure that represents 80 per cent of the number of
boxes seized.

Eight out of ten box owners were provably innocent. Taylor said: 'Of the £53
million in cash that the police took, £20 million has also been given back and
£33 million is now being referred to as "under investigation", of which only
£2.83 million has been confiscated or forfeited by the courts.'

This figure represents just over five per cent of the total money stored in
the vaults, although the Met has 690 ' suspect' boxes that it is still
investigating.

That means of the total number of boxes, around ten per cent are being probed
for villainy, a long way from the nine out of ten cases the Met surmised they
would find while wooing Judge Macrae.

Lawyers have seen their Rize cases squeezed and intimidated. Sara Teasdale
revealed how the police were first adamant that her client's money was criminal
cash, threatening forfeiture, only to try and turn the box-holder's business
partner against him, enticing him to wear a wire so as to entrap him into
admitting it was also money stolen from his own company.

Teasdale said: 'They first tried "wrong money". Then it was company money.
Even when they dropped criminal proceedings against him in February 2009, they
inexplicably continued with civil forfeiture proceedings.' The Yard was trying
all it could to get the cash.

'They were sitting on almost £1 million, and having referred to my client
anonymously in press releases as an example of why they had raided, they needed
to win.'

But this case was recently lost by the Met too, leaving the box-holder with
£200,000 in fees, money he is now seeking back from the police.

Others going after the Yard include some who claim that money and jewels have
gone missing from their boxes. Many have spoken to Live about their plight, although they have
asked not to be named because the information is personal.

One goldsmith from north London fought for over a year to get his £40,000
cash and valuables back, then claimed it was not all there. He has now filed an
official complaint.

'The police kept saying, "Why have you got all this cash?" and I showed them
my books.'

His premises were raided twice, the second time by 20 officers.

'They found nothing because I had done nothing and eventually this summer,
everything was returned to me. But £10,000 was gone - and my wife's diamond
earrings.'

The Met has strenuously denied all allegations of theft, pointing out that
anyone stealing from the boxes would have been caught on camera since officers
videoed the entire operation.

Another box-holder who is alleging theft, a wealthy Russian  émigré
party-planner from north London, who had £64,000 in cash and £250,000 worth of
jewellery, including heirlooms from Russia, successfully challenged the police
to produce the video.

'I am meticulous,' she said. 'I have a receipt for everything. When I got my
box back, £9,000 cash and some smaller items of jewellery were missing - a gold
baby's bracelet and an 18-carat gold ring.'

The initial police footage, she claims, had a time code and showed her box
being carried to a table. But then the tape was interrupted and when it
restarted the footage was being shot from a new camera, at a different angle
and without a time code, with real time having moved on many seconds.

She told Live: 'It only takes seconds
for a small envelope of cash or a gold ring to be swiped from the table and into
someone's pocket. I was staggered.' After failing to get adequate answers from
the Met's own Directorate of Professional Standards, her lawyers have gone to
the independent Police Complaints Authority, along with 70 other box-holders.

The Met maintains Operation Rize was an absolute success. DCI Ponting said:
'The MPS is committed to targeting those who benefit from the proceeds of crime,
restraining and confiscating criminal property and seeking to forfeit cash and
assets under the Proceeds Of Crime Act 2002.

As in the case of Operation Rize, this legislation enables the police to
reduce harm to communities, disrupt criminal networks and take out community
criminal role models. By taking the cash out of criminal lifestyles, money is
put back into the public purse and contributes to restoring community
confidence.

'In 2008/9 the MPS deprived 4,787 criminals of £21 million. Comparative
figures for 2002 are 239 criminals deprived of £1.5 million. In addition to £21
million actually permanently deprived from criminals, the MPS also has a cash
balance of £40 million detained under POCA awaiting forfeiture and perhaps as
much again in restrained assets. This equates to over £100 million in all, of
which Operation Rize has been a major contributor.'

Detective Chief Superintendent Nigel Mawer from SCD6 added, 'Rize continues
to be a hugely complex inquiry. We still have almost 700 boxes under active
investigation as well as a number of trials pending.'

However, Lawyer David Sonn said: 'Would an operation like Rize ever be run
again? I doubt it.'

Facing hefty fees for defending itself before two Judicial Reviews, being
pursued for millions of pounds in legal fees by innocent box-holders, and now
facing inquiries into theft, the political, judicial and financial costs of the
operation are beginning to stack up.

And yet when it first kicked off, one of the things that had endeared Rize
to everyone was its revenue-earning capacity, something revealed in a
tucked-away minute of the Metropolitan Police Authority from September 2008.

Warning that the police were lagging behind in meeting targets set to seize
criminals' assets, it stated: 'To achieve the target a further £36.6 million of
assets need to be seized in the remaining nine months.' This was 'a challenging
target'. However, 'with the emerging results from Operation Rize, the seizures
are likely to make a major contribution toward the final total.'

In fact, the operation may end up costing the taxpayer a fortune. Rize has
certainly helped put a number of hard-line criminals behind bars, but at what
cost?

Explore more:

People:

David
Wilson,

John
Yates,

Mark
Taylor

Places:

London,

India,

United Kingdom,

Russia,

Germany,

Europe

Organisations:

House of Lords,

Scotland Yard

Print this article

Read later

Email to a friend

Share this article:

Digg it

Del.icio.us

Reddit

Newsvine

Nowpublic

StumbleUpon

Facebook

MySpace

Fark

Comments (44)

Here's what readers have had to say so far. Why not debate this issue live on
our message boards.

The comments below have been moderated in advance.

Newest

Oldest

Best
rated

Worst
rated

View
all

Good article, it's difficult to decide what is right. The
police, acting on instructions had to open all of them and their information was
correct, that is, proceeds from crime. However I'm sure there are legitimate
hoardings. I have to ask though, why can't legitimate goods be simply stored at
a high street bank? they all offer this service. Anyone who uses the service of
these private storage deposits obviously don't want the contents to be subject
to the scrutiny of law enforcement agencies. A holocaust survivor storing
diamonds in case their dependents need to flee 60 years later is stretching
belief somewhat. More guns potentially off the street, dope and stolen cash
being removed is welcomed by the normal, law abiding citizens I'm sure.
Nevertheless, a good article.

- KDINSYDNEY, Sydney, Australia, 25/10/2009 10:22

Click to
rate

Rating   311

Report
abuse

Never mind, boys in blue, the good old Mr and Mrs Taxpayer
will pick up the tab. As long as it doesn't cost as much as paying MPs expenses
then its no problem, heh?

- keith jones, porthcawl, south wales, 25/10/2009
09:56

Click to
rate

Rating   235

Report
abuse

Looks like the criminals will win again in "broken
brtian". Might as well give up, the courts always back the wrong side.

- Bhodi, Almeria, 25/10/2009 09:53

Click to
rate

Rating   148

Report
abuse

Just goes to show who the real dishonest people are, when
the police have to resort to the sort of thing that we the public would be
arrested for and possibly prosecuted. Anorther indication where the system can
lie and cheat and get away with it, and they won't even have to pay the cost WE
WILL.

- David B, Lydd - Kent, 25/10/2009 09:52

Click to
rate

Rating   289

Report
abuse

The damage done to business and business confidence within
the U.K will be immense.
What business man will come to London with monies
or other negotiable goods knowing that he/she will be treated like a criminal.

By all means go after a criminal and his/her specific boxes but that
does not allow the police or revenue to attack all that live near. All this had
done is put another nail in the coffin of free enterprise within Britain.

London will become a grave yard of violence and hatred as jobs dry up
and only those that are on welfare or the super rich can live both hating each
other. "dreadful" Communism does not work, it just looks on in envy.

- mike, London, 25/10/2009 09:50

Click to
rate

Rating   339

Report
abuse

This smaks of Nazi wealth grabs of the 39-45 period. The
State and the Police have become one and it looks like Gestapo raids disguised
as something else.

- Lord de Las Moscas, Piggly Wiggly Farm, Nuttington
nr. Livin-on-the-Dole, 25/10/2009 09:46

Click to
rate

Rating   449

Report
abuse

The views expressed in the contents above are those
of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline.

We are no longer accepting comments on this
article.

Enter search term: Search Advanced
Search

My Top
50 Stories

Click on the icon below an article to save to your favourite stories
file

Remove

Check box to remove

Open

Close

Remove

Check box to remove

Open

Close

Tech

The
iPhone app lets you use your mobile to drive a car... when you're not in it

Do
you remember when James Bond escaped a sticky situation in Tomorrow Never Dies
using his remote-controlled car? Well now technology has jumped from the world
of fiction to reality.

Comments (18)

Add to
My Stories

Most
dramatic internet shake-up in 40 years to allow web addresses in languages from
Arabic to Japanese

International
domain names or addresses that can be written in non-English characters are
expected to be approved this week.

Comments (31)

Add to
My Stories

YouTube
coup: U2 becomes first to stream live stadium gig over the website

U2
became the first stadium-packing stars to allow a full live show to be streamed
for free on YouTube today.

Comments (4)

Add to
My Stories

Apps
to make your mobile phone even smarter

Want
your mobile to plan dinner parties, read barcodes and identify birds for you?
The only way is apps. Here, we select the best applications for your
smartphone.

Comments (0)

Pictures

Add to
My Stories

Sport
Headlines

Most
Read

Manager Phil Brown holds on in Hull shake-up... but
Tigers hero Dean Windass calls for him to move on

Arsenal 2 Liverpool 1: Merida and Bendtner lead the
young Guns into quarter-finals

Manchester City 5 Scunthorpe 1: Roque Santa Cruz
inspires Eastlands stroll

Chelsea 4 Bolton: Blues ease into last eight with
comfortable victory

Manchester United face compensation demand after
Oakwell rampage

Sir Alex Ferguson lost top spot at Liverpool and is
now public enemy No 1 with referees, but let's remember that he is ... STILL
THE GREATEST

Ex-Toon chairman Shepherd blasts decision to sell
St James' naming rights

West Ham defender Calum Davenport's shock as police
charge him with assault

Simon Jordan hints Palace sale as he buries hatchet
with ex-Blues chief Gold

German legend Matthaus turns down Argentine outfit
Racing - by text

Liverpool ready to reward keeper Pepe Reina with
new five-year contract

Robbie Keane likes sub-plot ahead of Tottenham's
derby clash with Arsenal

Martinez makes calls to calm the storm after his
amazing attack on Ferguson

Michael Owen is as good as he ever was, says
Manchester United team-mate Jonny Evans

Greatest Arsenal v Tottenham matches remembered: We
reveal four of the best

Liverpool defender Fabio Aurelio receives shock
call-up to Brazil squad

OLYMPICS: Angry Romero hits out at 'ludicrous'
changes to Olympic cycling programme

CRICKET: You Trotter! I saw Jonathan Trott
celebrate with South Africans after win over England, says Michael Vaughan

RUGBY UNION: What injury crisis? It looks like
French sunshine is suiting Jonny Wilkinson

CRICKET: Former Test umpire Shepherd dies at the
age of 68 after losing cancer battle

MORE HEADLINES

THE LIST: Top 50 football kits
of all time - Nos 20-11

Arsenal 2 Liverpool 1: Merida
and Bendtner lead the young Guns into quarter-finals

Robbie Keane likes sub-plot as
star says Spurs ARE overtaking Arsenal

Madrid humbled 4-0 by third
division Alcorcon...now Ronaldo adds to woe

VIDEO: See Liverpool legend Jan
Molby's mythical 'lost goal' against Manchester United for first time in 25
years

Sir Alex Ferguson lost top spot
at Liverpool and is now public enemy No 1 with referees, but let's remember
that he is ... STILL THE GREATEST

Martinez makes calls to calm the
storm after his amazing attack on Ferguson

JEFF POWELL: My top ten British
and world managers of all time

Arsenal gift Spurs a star: Harry
thanks Arsene for giving away £12m Palacios

Manager Phil Brown holds on in
Hull shake-up... but Tigers hero Dean Windass calls for him to move on

Johnson and Diarra still
haunting Pompey as transfer ban starts to bite

Greatest Arsenal v Tottenham
matches remembered: We reveal four of the best

You Trotter! I saw Jonathan
Trott celebrate with South Africans after win over England, says Michael
Vaughan

Manchester City 5 Scunthorpe 1:
Roque Santa Cruz inspires Eastlands stroll

Chelsea 4 Bolton: Blues ease
into last eight with comfortable victory

At last! Here's playboy Alberto
Aquilani - just what Liverpool and Rafa Benitez have been waiting for since
Xabi Alonso left

THE LIST: Top 50 football kits
of all time - Nos 30-21

Ex-Toon chairman Shepherd blasts
decision to sell St James' naming rights

MOST READ IN DETAIL

Science

Vile-smelling
foreign ladybirds set to invade homes this winter

As
winter approaches households around the UK will be invaded by a sticky and
foul-smelling invader.

Comments (84)

Add to
My Stories

Cleanliness
IS next to godliness as lemony-fresh smell promotes moral behaviour in study

People
are unconsciously fairer and more generous when they are in clean-smelling
environments, according to university study.

Comments (1)

Add to
My Stories

How
giant shrimps' eyes could help inspire next generation of DVD players

The
mantis shrimps have the most complex vision systems known to science,
researchers at Bristol University said.

Comments (2)

Add to
My Stories

Leaping
wolf scoops top prize at the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 awards

This
stunning image of an Iberian wolf was taken by a Spanish photographer.

Comments (49)

Add to
My Stories

Today's
headlines

Most
Read

Nursery monster Vanessa George FINALLY names
children she abused

'We've learned a terrible lesson, trust nobody,'
warns mother of girl killed after going to see 'boy' she met on internet

Wheel clampers rake in £3,000 an HOUR in shopping
centre car park

Coyotes maul singer, 19, to death as she hiked
alone in national park

Woman suffers horrendous burns after reaction to
Boots hair dye

Boris Johnson sacks senior director for using
'racist word' at meeting

Burglary suspects make worst disguises in the
world... by drawing masks and beards on their faces in permanent marker

Is this the face of Osama bin Laden? New Al-Qaeda
video may show first footage of terror chief since 2007

Navy finds hijacked British couple's yacht off
Somali coast - but there's no one on board

Tony Blair WILL take EU presidency 'if the job is
big enough'

Mother-to-be 'objected to ethnic staff at birth'

Woman kills neighbour's cats with anti-freeze to
stop them urinating on her strawberries

Nursery children branded racist as schools report
40,000 playground race spats every year

Alcohol worse than Ecstasy, says drugs tsar

Cambridge University row after students set-up
tabloid website complete with Page Three

Anti-war protesters deface Poppy poster with urge
to 'prosecute Blair'

Expenses clampdown could see 200 MPs bail out of
Commons in 'biggest clearout since 1945'

Now peers will see expenses cut in shake-up of
allowances for House of Lords

No men OR women needed: Scientists create sperm and
eggs from stem cells

Anorexia risk 'higher if mother diets'

Sneeze left me crippled for two years: Mother's
agony ends with pioneering spinal surgery

Post strikes 'could drag into Christmas'

Mother-of-12 who swindled £52,000 by claiming
children were disabled walks free from court

Number of mortgages approved rises to highest level
in 18 months

Swiss crackdown on 'suicide tourism' could spell
end of Dignitas clinic

'I didn't punch no woman': Millionaire footballer
denies attacking woman 'who objected when he groped her'

The woman who had to go under the knife - after
swallowing an entire canteen of cutlery

Nelson back in action 30 minutes after amputation

Housewife snaps pair of albino squirrels

MORE HEADLINES

Mother facing prosecution 'for
asking for ethnic hospital staff to be removed from birthing room'

'We've learned a terrible
lesson, trust nobody,' warns mother of girl killed after going to see 'boy'
she met on internet

Nursery monster Vanessa George
finally names the children she abused

Mother-of-12 falsely claimed
£52,000 in benefits... by saying her healthy children were disabled

Mark of disrespect: Anti-war
protesters vandalise poppy poster with urge to 'prosecute Blair'

The most harrowing job in the
world

Parents' backlash at primary
school that keeps unruly pupils in isolation room to calm down

Schoolgirl, 15, watches in
horror as hoodie stamps on her tiny puppy's head and kills it

Wealthy householder poisoned her
neighbour's cats with anti-freeze... to stop them urinating on her
strawberries

Sneeze left me crippled for two
years: Mother's agony ends with pioneering spinal surgery

Pictured: The woman who had to
go under the knife - after swallowing an entire canteen of cutlery

How did Andre Agassi get away
with taking drugs?

Now that IS creepy: 'Octomum'
dresses as a PREGNANT nun for Halloween... and her babies become little devils

Lesbian police officer sues
force over 'homophobia' after being banned from working with her
girlfriend

'Who's first, ladies?' Meet
Oumbie, the 28st gorilla stud who's a big hit with the girls

Parents banned from watching
their children in playgrounds... in case they are paedophiles

Alcohol and cigarettes are more
harmful than Ecstasy and LSD, says drugs tsar

Teen 'hero' who saved couple
from burning home unmasked as serial arsonist who started the fire himself

Pub regular banned from drinking
Stella died after downing six pints of water in protest

WWI soldier's hidden diary
reveals the amazing trench truces soldiers would call to yell names at each
other

MOST READ IN DETAIL

ADVERTORIAL FEATURES

How happy are
you? Find out how happy you are and you could win £150 Spa Vouchers.
Karma. To let the sun shine in

Open
University WIN £150 worth of Open University vouchers

Jean Patrique
Knives Get this 5-piece Stainless Steel Professional Chef¿s Knife Set
for only £1.99!

Science and
Maths Science and maths can lead to all sorts of exciting jobs for
your child. Find out more

Kodak Free Prize
Draw Win an incredible Kodak all-in-one printer. Enter now!

Nescafe
Nescafe, captures coffee at it's brightest. Click to win Laura Ashley Garden
Equipment.

Enjoy England
Win a luxury two-night break for two in Manchester!

Back
to top

Home

News

Sport

TV&Showbiz

Femail

Health

Science&Tech

Money

Debate

Coffee
Break

Property

Motoring

Travel

Sitemap Newsletters
RSS Archive Text-based site Top
of page
Daily Mail Mail on
Sunday Widgets This is Network This is London This is Money
Metro Loot Jobsite Dating Find a property Motors Prime location Lasting Tribute

Published by Associated Newspapers Ltd
Part of the
Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday & Metro Media Group

© 2009 Associated
Newspapers Ltd
Contact us Terms Privacy policy Advertise with us