The latest convictions in the Fowler Oldfield money laundering case bring another chapter of one of the UK’s biggest and longest-running financial crime investigations to a close.
In August 2026, Baqa Haider was sentenced to six years in prison and Nathan Rivers received a suspended 27-month sentence for their roles in a £266 million money laundering operation centred on a Bradford scrap jewellery business.
The case will be familiar to anyone who followed the NatWest money laundering scandal a few years ago. In 2021, NatWest was fined almost £265 million after the FCA found that it had failed to properly monitor Fowler Oldfield’s banking activity.
But the NatWest fine was not the end of the story. It was one part of a much bigger criminal investigation that began in 2016 and has taken years to reach its latest convictions.
The investigation has now involved multiple trials, prison sentences, fugitives, millions of pounds in recovered cash and gold, and more than 8,000 hours of CCTV footage. It also demonstrates how a legitimate business can be transformed into a vehicle for laundering criminal proceeds and how warning signs can build up over years before the full picture becomes clear.
From scrap jewellery to £266m in criminal cash
Fowler Oldfield was an established scrap jewellery business in Bradford. Its legitimate business involved buying scrap jewellery, including gold, for cash.
That business model provided an obvious opportunity for criminals. Cash could enter the business appearing to be part of ordinary commercial activity, before being deposited into the company’s bank account and used to purchase high-purity gold.
The scale of the activity changed dramatically.
According to West Yorkshire Police, the amount of cash entering the business increased from around £11,000 in 2012 to over £650,000 a year later. By 2015, payments into the company had reached £95 million.
Between January 2014 and September 2016, more than £266 million was paid into Fowler Oldfield’s NatWest accounts. Police calculated that over £200 million of criminal cash was laundered through the account between 2014 and 2016.
At its peak, cash was reportedly being processed at a rate of £1.7 million a day.
Couriers travelled from across the country carrying bags of cash to Fowler Oldfield’s premises. The company banked the money and used it to purchase high-purity gold grain. The gold was then exported to Dubai using fake shipping invoices.
The effect was to turn criminal cash into apparently legitimate commercial proceeds and ultimately into an asset that could be moved internationally.
The warning came from an unexpected place
The investigation did not begin with a sophisticated financial intelligence system uncovering a complex international network.
It began when a security company noticed something unusual. In 2016, the company responsible for collecting cash from Fowler Oldfield raised concerns about the dramatic increase in the amount being collected from the premises.
That prompted West Yorkshire Police’s Economic Crime Unit to investigate.
Surveillance showed couriers regularly arriving at the Bradford premises and delivering large bags of cash. Investigators then began to piece together the financial picture.
The company’s legitimate business had changed dramatically. What had once been a scrap jewellery operation was now processing enormous quantities of cash.
This is where ongoing monitoring becomes important. A business doesn’t become suspicious just because its activities are unusual. What matters is whether the scale, pattern or nature of those activities remains consistent with what the business is expected to do.
Fowler Oldfield was already in the business of buying scrap jewellery for cash, so cash transactions were not that unusual. But the scale changed dramatically. Cash entering the business rose from thousands of pounds to millions, while large amounts were being delivered to the premises and processed through the business. That kind of change should have prompted a much closer look at the source and purpose of the funds, and whether the activity still made sense for the business.
NatWest’s £264.8m fine was only part of the story
The banking side of the case became one of the UK’s most significant AML enforcement actions.
In December 2021, NatWest was fined £264,772,619.95 following an FCA prosecution. The bank had failed to properly monitor Fowler Oldfield’s banking activities between November 2012 and June 2016.
The FCA case focused on the bank’s failure to comply with its AML obligations. But the subsequent criminal proceedings have demonstrated just how extensive the underlying activity was.
The criminals were not simply depositing money and withdrawing it again. The scheme was designed to make the proceeds appear legitimate. Fowler Oldfield provided the commercial infrastructure through which the cash could enter the financial system, while linked businesses helped facilitate the purchase and export of gold.
Fake gold and fake invoices
The investigation uncovered another layer to the operation at Pure Nines, a linked company in London’s Hatton Garden. Investigators found large quantities of cash, including a holdall stuffed with banknotes and an automated cash-counting machine. They also found what appeared to be gold bars.
But almost all of them were fake. Of the 147 bars found, only one was actually gold. The remainder were silver bars coated in gold, apparently intended to create the appearance of a legitimate gold-dealing business.
Police said Pure Nines was primarily being used to count cash and facilitate the purchase and export of gold rather than conducting gold trading.
The operation involved fake shipping invoices and an international money launderer based in Dubai. Samir Jagirdar, who owned and directed Pure Nines, pleaded guilty to money laundering. His brother-in-law, Baqa Haider, was involved in creating fake shipping invoices and exporting the gold.
The latest convictions give a clearer picture of how the different parts of the operation fitted together.
A decade from the first warning to the latest convictions
The sheer length of the investigation is one of the most striking features of the case.
Police began their investigation in 2016. They subsequently analysed invoices, emails and other paperwork and reviewed over 8,000 hours of CCTV footage.
Four men were convicted and sentenced in March 2025. Fowler Oldfield director Daniel Rawson received ten years and ten months in prison. Fellow director Gregory Frankel was sentenced to 11 years and eight months, while Haroon Rashid received ten years and Arjun Babber 11 years. The latter three were sentenced in their absence and are believed to have left the UK.
Then, following a further trial concluding in July 2026, Haider and Fowler Oldfield staff member Nathan Rivers were convicted. Haider was sentenced to six years and Rivers received a suspended 27-month sentence.
Three convicted men remain at large, with police continuing efforts to locate them and secure their extradition.
There is still another strand to the case. Gary Smith is due to stand trial in February 2027, charged under section 330 of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 with failing to report suspicious activity regarding money laundering while working in the regulated sector.
So while the latest sentencing marks an important conclusion to the main criminal proceedings, the wider story is not entirely over.
The takeaway for businesses
The most important lesson here is that controls need to respond when a customer’s behaviour changes.
A business may have a perfectly legitimate reason for handling cash. It may also have a legitimate reason for experiencing rapid growth. Neither fact automatically means that money laundering is taking place.
The risk arises when the explanation no longer matches the evidence.
Here, the change was extraordinary. Cash deposits increased from £11,000 to more than £650,000 in a year, before reaching tens of millions of pounds. Couriers were repeatedly delivering bags of cash. The business was processing enormous volumes that were difficult to reconcile with its established activity.
That kind of change should trigger more than a routine review.
It should prompt questions about the source of funds, the nature of the underlying transactions, the parties involved, the customer’s expected activity and whether the overall pattern remains consistent with the customer’s business.
Is a policy enough? No
The story is also a reminder that having an AML policy on paper is very different from operating an effective AML framework.
A risk assessment needs to be dynamic. Customer profiles need to be revisited when circumstances change. Transaction monitoring needs to identify unusual patterns rather than simply process transactions against static rules. And when something does not make sense, there needs to be a clear process for escalating the concern and deciding what action to take.
The case also demonstrates why context matters.
A single large cash deposit might have a legitimate explanation. A scrap jewellery business dealing in cash might not, at first glance, seem particularly unusual. But millions of pounds arriving in bags, a dramatic increase in turnover, unusual counterparties and international gold transactions create a very different risk picture when considered together.
The strongest AML controls connect those dots.
The real warning sign? The change
The most useful lesson from Fowler Oldfield is that compliance teams should pay attention not only to what a customer does, but how that activity changes over time.
The business had existed before the laundering operation. Its activities had a legitimate commercial explanation. What changed was the scale and nature of the activity. That is why ongoing monitoring matters.
Customer due diligence performed at the beginning of a relationship cannot be treated as a permanent certificate of legitimacy. Businesses evolve, customers change their behaviour and criminal networks actively look for legitimate businesses that can provide access to the financial system.
The Fowler Oldfield case shows the consequences when that evolution is not identified quickly enough.
The NatWest fine made headlines because of its huge size. Five years later, the continuing criminal proceedings demonstrate that behind a major AML enforcement action is often a much longer story about business activity, warning signs, escalation and whether someone connected the dots.
