£1million found in Coventry 'safe house' as international crime gang smashed

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£1million found in Coventry 'safe house' as international crime gang smashed

Postby dutchman » Sat Nov 09, 2019 12:49 am

The gang were believed to have acquired an estimated 680 million Euros through cigarette trafficking, drug smuggling and money laundering

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An international crime gang used a safe house in Coventry to store more than £1million in cash.

The stash was was found when authorities smashed the group and raided the home in Aldermans Green.

That raid was part of a co-ordinated Europe-wide operation aimed at dismantling an international crime network involved in cigarette trafficking, drug smuggling and money laundering.

The safe house was used by three men - Arturs Nespors, Alexksej Rybnikov and Marius Stancikas - and they were yesterday (November 6) jailed for a total of 12 years and nine months having previously admitted money laundering offences at an earlier hearing.

Nespors, 30, and Rybnikov, 42, of no fixed address, were both handed sentences of five years and three months, while Stancikas, 40, of Broad Street, Foleshill, was jailed for two years and three months.The trio used the house in Coventry as a hub for their criminal operation and smuggled large sums of cash out of the country hidden among clothes in shrink-wrapped suitcases.

Nespors was arrested when HMRC and armed officers from West Midlands Police entered the ‘cash safe house’ on May 16.

A search uncovered more than £1million in cash and three money counting machines. There was also an open suitcase which had been partially filled with clothes and envelopes filled with cash.

Rybnikov was arrested just an hour before when he was seen leaving the premises.

Earlier in the day armed officers stopped a car occupied by Stancikas and another man - Agnius Sindaras, 43, of Lithuania - on Princess Road in Manchester. Both men were arrested and £251,000 of cash found in the boot of the car.

Sindaras was deported from the UK to Lithuania in May 2019 following his arrest.

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