A businessman today (thurs) denied investing in a

A businessman today (thurs) denied investing in a ‘web’ of companies to clean ‘dirty’ money and hide his profits from the authorities.

Jeremy ‘Jez’ Dineen, 41, is said to have laundered over pnds stlng 700,000 in Guernsey and the Isle of Man through a series of investments.

Dineen’s cash came from the proceeds of cross-Channel tobacco smuggling, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard.

The ultimate destination for the fortune could have been Belize – as Dineen flew to the former British colony in Central America to make inquiries over opening bank accounts.

An undercover customs operation had recorded the 41-year-old discussing with co-defendant Ian Woodcock and Sharam Rajab the best way of ‘secreting money’.

It is claimed Rajab helped make six of nine transfers of money from the ‘Sterling’ bureau de change in Edgware Road, Paddington.

The cash ‘in most instances’ went to accounts controlled by Woodcock, it is claimed.

Godfrey Carey, QC, prosecuting, cross-examined Dineen today (Thurs) about comments made by him to another man secretly recorded by customs officers.

In one conversation which involved a lorry stopped containing 4 million cigarettes, Dineen said he had ‘been doing that about two years.

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Mr Carey said: ‘Could it be that you had been involved in tobacco smuggling and its proceeds for two years, which takes us back to 1998, when you were in possession of this huge amount of money, which you have claimed to the jury has come to you from motor trading since 1994?’

Dineen replied: ‘Absolutely not.

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‘What else could it mean, been doing that for two years,’ Mr Carey went on.

Dineen explained: ‘I was talking about motor bikes.

I’ve been doing that for two years.

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The QC said that might be the case if the conversation had been about bikes, ‘but it was about an intercepted lorry containing 4 and a half million cigarettes’.

Dineen, smartly dressed in a grey suit and with a long ‘mullet’ haircut replied:

‘With respect I suggest you are totally wrong.

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But Mr Carey continued: ‘You plainly said intercepted.

.

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that cannot relate to bikes could it.

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Dineen continued to deny he was talking about bootlegging tobacco.

Dineen, 41, of Spring Lane, Mapperley, Nottingham; Rajab, 48, of Brook Lane, Gamston, Notts; and Woodcock, 40, of The Promenade, Port St Mary, Isle of Man, deny laundering the proceeds of crime between October 1998 and November last year.

The trial continues.

ends