UK Scores Unexplained Wealth Order Victory

Tom Burroughes

8 October 2020

The UK’s National Crime Agency has scored a major victory for the recently-introduced unexplained wealth order system, forcing a suspected money launderer to surrender about £10 million of property.

Mansoor Mahmood Hussain, who acted for gangsters, including a murderer and drug trafficker, has been made to hand over a variety of properties, and other assets. Known as Manni, he developed a portfolio of properties in Cheshire, West Yorkshire and London while pretending to be a legitimate business owner .

The NCA used UWOs to extract Hussain’s ill-gotten gains, an important result for the new powers that have been controversial.

“The case of Mr Hussain has given the NCA several firsts; it was the first case in which a UWO was obtained in respect of alleged serious organised crime and, most significantly, it is the first UWO to result in the actual recovery of the alleged proceeds of crime,” Kingsley Napley criminal litigation partner Edmund Smyth, said.

“The case also saw the successful deployment of both account and property freezing orders, in addition to the UWO, in order to ensure there was no dissipation of assets,” he continued.

"Whilst it is a clear victory for the NCA, Mr Hussain’s case appears outwardly to have been more straightforward than others. Proving links to serious organised crime in the UK is likely to be far easier than investigating public figures in other countries with complicated offshore trust structures, questions of beneficial ownership and assets held overseas. With the success of Mr Hussain’s case under its belt, the NCA will now have newly available resources to focus on its other investigations,” Smyth said.

Reports said that while Hussain, 40, has not been convicted of a crime, investigators said they had intelligence linking him to serious gangsters - but could not obtain the detailed evidence needed for charges of money laundering. Instead, in 2019, they turned to the UWO regime to force a person to open their books to show whether their wealth had come from legitimate sources.