Diamond dealers jailed for laundering £53m to crime gangs

A London-based couple who ran a diamond trading business from their home in East Finchley have been jailed for laundering more than £53m for organised crime gangs. Danny Koort, 52, and Jeanette Rosen, 48, were convicted for money laundering at the Old Bailey after a joint investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) and City of London Police. The couple are believed to have laundered up to £53m for organised crime groups in under two years, based on diary entries showing their deals from January 2013 to November 2014. The court heard that the couple - who used code names such as Fiat, Honda, Champagne, Cristal and Caviar to refer to customers - ran a legitimate diamond dealing business but used it as cover to clean the money. Koort was jailed for 11 years and Rosen 10 years, while an accomplice, Andrew Russell, 54, of Ongar in Essex, was also convicted of money laundering and jailed for four years. Russell was arrested on 25 July 2014 with £198,000 in cash in a holdall in his car after having been under surveillance at a meeting at an Essex hotel where he collected a “large bag”. He then bought a holdall from Argos and filled it with the cash. Later that day officers photographed Russell and Rosen meeting in a street but Russell did not transfer the money to her. Rosen was eventually arrested on 28 November 2014 when she was carrying just short of £170,000 in a bag in a central London street. Police searched her office where they found €235,215 (£211,000) and £17,165 in cash. The officers also searched her black Mercedes and discovered 10 pay-as-you-go mobile phones - nine with code names written on. Tony Luhman, NCA senior investigating officer, said: “Koort and Rosen had enormous sums of money going through their books and were clearly doing a lot of business with many organised crime groups. “Their conviction removes a money laundering facility on which numerous other criminals have depended, and now makes life harder for crooks looking to clean their dirty cash.” Detective constable Mark Edwards, from City of London Police, added: “Money launderers are integral to organised crime. Stopping operations like Koort and Rosen’s, where funds were laundered on an industrial scale, inflicts massive damage on serious organised gangs.”