Jailed waste criminal must pay back record 917,000

This is the largest Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) ruling the Environment Agency has secured against any individual to date. The Environment Agency, working with financial investigators from New Scotland Yard in a three-year investigation, have shown that Hugh ODonnell laundered millions of pounds in illegal profits.

Mr O’Donnell was jailed for four years in June 2011 (see letsrecycle.com story) forrunning a massive illegal waste site at Aldermaston near Reading, spread over land the size of five football pitches, and was also imprisoned for firearms offences.

When the Environment Agency and Thames Valley Police raided an illegal site evidence was seized of illegal waste activity, an unlicensed handgun and ammunition, other weapons, stolen vehicles, plant equipment and almost 50,000 in cash.

The Environment Agencys regional and national Environmental Crime Teams used advanced forensic techniques such as DNA and handwriting analysis, smartwater tracking, fingerprinting, mobile phone and laptop interrogation to track members of the gang.

Isleworth Crown Court jailed Mr ODonnell, 64, and his two accomplices Robert Evans, 62, and Peter Lavelle, 28, all of Reading, for running a multi-million pound waste crime business from a site in the Berkshire town.

Complex

Angus Innes, Environment Agency prosecution team leader, said: This investigation has been one of the biggest and most complex ever undertaken by the Environment Agency, working with the London Regional Asset Recovery Team, using intelligence and forensic science to proactively target an organised criminal gang running an illegal waste site. Waste crime puts the environment and human health at risk and undermines legitimate waste businesses.

The Environment Agency wants to make sure that serious waste crime doesnt pay – we dont just catch criminals, we want to confiscate the assets theyve gained from crime.

Illegal profits were laundered though the various trading names and aliases used by Mr ODonnell and his associates, the London Regional Asset Recovery Team [RART] based at New Scotland Yard found. RART investigators worked for three years and examined thousands of pages of bank accounts and associated exhibits to provide evidence of ODonnells money laundering operation.

Detective Inspector Jeremy Tizard from RART said: This was a very successful joint operation using the financial investigation skills of the London Regional Asset Recovery Team to support the prosecution of O’Donnell and his associates for money laundering as well as environmental offences. It demonstrates the benefits of collaborative working and using financial investigators to disrupt criminal networks as well as recovering their proceeds of crime through confiscation.

Restraint orders, preventing the disposal of over 1m worth of assets, have been in place for the last two years, while the London Regional Asset Recovery Team [RART] based at Scotland Yard identified profits that were made illegally.

Phoney

Mr ODonnell tried to avoid detection by using aliases and intimidation, using accomplices Lavelle and Evans to set-up and run the day-to-day operations of a string of phoney businesses. He had previously been jailed for six months for waste offences and subsequently for the non-payment of fines.

Over a six-year period Mr ODonnells turnover was 100 times the amount he had declared to the Inland Revenue despite owning several properties in Berkshire and a luxury villa in Alicante, Spain and numerous heavy plant vehicles.

The judge, HHJ Edmunds QC at the confiscation hearing yesterday (May 3), said: Mr ODonnell candidly said monies were paid into an account used by him to conceal ownership of assets and to transfer money to keep it safe from investigators; indeed there were a number of accounts in different names, all in an effort to conceal assets. He conducted businesses in ways designed to deceive, vehicles were registered to one of the companies created by Mr ODonnell to assist fraud.

At the sentencing hearing in June last year, Judge Edmunds QC had commended the Environment Agency for presenting an overwhelming case for conviction against a criminal operation that was deliberate, calculated offending on an industrial scale.

Mr O’Donnell was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for the possession of illegal firearms. He was sentenced to four years in prison for money-laundering and 22 months for waste offences to be served concurrently in June 2011, the day after being released from prison for the firearm offences. Evans and Lavelle received 2 years and 18 months respectively for money-laundering, and 14 months and 12 month respectively for waste offences all to be served concurrently.