From the information that surfaced, ‘ Eaglewood’  probably started in 2007 when undercover detectives were following two convicted drug dealers to an unknown individual, who was later identified as Eyad Iktilat. After being arrested, one of them was found to have been carrying over 1,36 million euros in a bag.

Iktilat appeared to be a big fish, with plenty of luxury cars and real estate. Royal Oak Taxis, a rundown, fortified garage and cafe was run by Israeli-born Iktilat.  He was also a director of the nearby Euro Foreign Exchange, through which up to £1m a day in drug money would be laundered.

Iktilat, of Euston, north London, denied counts of money laundering, conspiracy to supply cocaine and cannabis, and possession of cocaine, but was convicted after a five-month trial. Initially jailed for 21 years, his sentence was increased to 30 on appeal. “He did not believe he was doing anything wrong. He believed he was acting as a bank,” said an officer. In two years, an estimated £100m passed through the ramshackle breeze-block taxi building. It was then taken to the bureau de change. There, manager Jean-Claude Frigieri, 56, of West Molesey, Surrey, bought up to €450,000 at a time, sometimes several times a day, from a bank note wholesaler called Interchange, which had no idea about his criminal dealings. He was convicted of money laundering and jailed for 10 years.

The money laundering consisted of buying 500 euro notes at Euro Foreign Exchange with drug money; the first stage in concealing the dirty origin of the money. And a perfect way to reduce the weight and volume of the drug money. Did you hear that Colombian cartels prefer 500 euro notes as payment for supplying cocaine rather than $100 notes?

The Guardian reports that Iraqi refugee Maythem al-Ansari was the main banker. When police swooped on his £3m west London home they had to use a digger and angle grinders to smash through a fortified security wall. He arrived in Britain in 1999 as Mithum Mohammed, later changing his name to al-Ansari, a famous banking name in Saudi Arabia. He worked as a bus driver but swiftly built up a multi-million-pound property empire. By 2004 he was investing in restaurants and vineyards and specializing in properties in Park Lane and Mayfair. The 42-year-old used business links to lend an air of legitimacy, and could exchange large amounts without attracting suspicion, making him the perfect cover for someone to change large amounts of cash into euros.

For a 5% ‘ introduction fee’ criminals could use the money laundering services of the taxi company, being the exchange to 500 euro notes. Details on the use of the notes were not made public, but you can assume they were used to pay for the cocaine on one hand, and used to invest in real estate and other goods for the criminals themselves on the other. Only a couple of criminals actually build up a ‘ legitimate’  business with dirty money. Most of them just try to find ‘clever’ ways to enjoy their lifestyles without being caught in the web…

Among the sentenced was a London ‘hero’ fire fighter, commended for his role in the bombing response, who was going down in the aftermath of the London bombings. He was on sick leave suffering from ‘ stress’ .  Owning two audis and leading a ‘ champagne lifestyle’ , some people had some doubts about the ‘ stress’ . He was however arrested while putting 100 kilogram of cocaine in smaller bags. The drugs had been picked up from a beach in the a coastal town the previous night, having been smuggled from continental Europe on a rigid-hulled inflatable speedboat. Try to talk you out of that one; that must be stressy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12120309

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11930487

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/05/police-smash-london-drug-gangster-syndicate

http://www.policeprofessional.com/news.aspx?id=11787

The (DEA) investigation apparently started when in 2005 dogs sniffed cocaine in an airplane in Miami. The money used to buy the plane was traced back to Mexican exhange houses; that is how the interest for the money flow from the exhange houses from Wachovia started.

Wachovia admitted offering correspondent banking services to 22 Casa de Cabio’s  (CDC) through three methods: wire-transferring money on behalf of third-party customers; accepting bulk cash transfers made by armored cars and other methods; and accepting checks and traveler’s checks put in pouches or digitally scanned through “remote deposit capture.”

From May 2004 to May 2007, Wachovia processed at least $373 billion in wire transfers on behalf of CDCs, the bank admitted. It processed $4.7 billion in bulk cash and $47 billion in ‘remote deposite capture’ deposits for all correspondent banking customers, including Mexican exchange houses, Wachovia admitted.

The case is USA v. Wachovia Bank, 10-cr-20165, U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida (Miami).

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-17/wachovia-to-pay-160-million-to-end-laundering-probe-update1-.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/business/18launder.html

http://www.justice.gov/dea/pubs/states/newsrel/boston070208.html

http://www.poten.com/NewsDetails.aspx?id=10317976

www.complinet.com

http://tinyurl.com/c6rooy