An experienced lawyer rode roughshod over professi

An experienced lawyer rode roughshod over professional rules to wash a fraudster’s dirty pnds stlng 20 million clean in a massive laundering plot, a jury heard today (Tuesday).

On the instructions of jailed beer baron Ellis Martin, solicitor 52-year-old Louis Glatt set up an international web of front companies to ‘salt away’ the proceeds of his crooked client’s dishonesty.

London’s Southwark Crown Court heard 41-year-old Martin made a fortune cheating the public purse of duty payable on beer, wines, spirits and tobacco between the Autumn of 1994 and January 1997.

And even while in prison for a mirror fraud, Martin continued to run his dishonest ‘commercial business’ with Glatt’s assistance.

Mr Oliver Sells, QC, prosecuting, said the university educated lawyer, a practising solicitor for 25 years, was involved in an unlawful agreement to launder money.

‘He set up companies, he handled money, he acted in relation to the purchase of many properties, and he generally acted for Martin, whilst Martin was both at liberty, on trial and later in prison, dealing with the profits of his crime,’ said the barrister.

‘That is a crime in itself, the crime of laundering criminal proceeds.

‘

Martin ran his bootlegging operation for over two years making substantial profits by selling alcohol and tobacco duty free to cash and carry outlets – even being jailed in first Brixton Prison, se London, and Weyland Prison, Norfolk, did nothing to deter him.

‘It is a most unusual feature of this case from the period April 1996 to January 1997, Martin ran the fraud from prison,’ said Mr Sells.

‘And he ran it from prison partly with the help of Glatt.

‘Glatt was able to use, and the Crown say he abused, his position as a solicitor by providing facilities for Martin and to have visits in which he pretended the visitors were clerks of his firm.

‘But they were nothing of the sort.

They were simply criminals visiting under his umbrella.

‘

Glatt was in sole practice running a small Mayfair-based firm.

As such he was bound by strict professional rules.

‘Glatt knew Martin to be a resourceful energetic businessman,’ said Mr Sells.

‘But more, he knew – and this is the astonishing part – that Martin was a fraudster in the premier league of fraudsters.

‘

Counsel said Glatt knew the mastermind had been convicted of fraud in 1983, and in 1994 was arrested again for a pnds stlng 6 million duty scam.

‘Glatt knew in April 1996 Martin was convicted of that fraud and sentenced to a substantial term of imprisonment and subjected to a confiscation order of pnds stlng 3.

1 million,’ said Mr Sells.

Knowing the kind of client Martin was, Glatt should have been guided by professional rules designed to ensure a proper solicitor-client relationship.

‘Glatt asserts he did have such a relationship with Martin, but the CRown say it was quite different – what he actually did was be a party to a thoroughly dishonest agreement to dispose of huge amounts of the proceeds of fraud, the srimes of his client,’ said Mr Sells.

‘Right up until the end, Glatt set up off-shore companies designed to hide the money,’ he said.

‘He received a lot of money into his client account and channeled money from the client account off-shore, and acted for Martin in the purchase of numberous properties.

‘

Glatt disguised what was being done for Martin by keeping his name out of transactions.

‘There is a long paperchain of front companies and front individuals to disguise the fact it was Martin’s money.

‘

Mr Sells said Glatt conceded taking instructions from Martin.

‘But what he says is this.

He believed at the time, not now, but at the time, that all the funds belonged, not to the fraudulent Martin, his client, but to Martin’s mother.

‘

He said the mother was a lady in her fifties, living in council property and earning at the time between pnds stlng 50 and pnds stlng 100 a week, working in a nursing home.

‘Not, you may think, the kind of person likely to produce fraudulent funds in the region of pnds stlng 20 million,’ said Mr Sells.

He said Glatt used the mother, Josephine Cruikshank, of Wood Green, north London, as a front ‘to give himself the vestige of a defence.

‘

Glatt, of Chessinton Avenue, Finchley, north London denies conspiring with Martin, of Chase Road, Southgate, Jon Hutchinson, 29, of Birbeck Road, Beckenham, Kent, and John Gardener, 40, of Freemantle Road, Barkingside, Essex, to launder the proceeds of crime.

The jury were told the other three men had pleaded guilty to the plot.

Last year, Martin, Hutchinson, Jason Wainwright, 30, of Oxford Close, Cheshunt, Herts, Maurice Aarons, 38, of Brimfield Road, Watts Wood, Purfleet, Essex, Graham Went, 55, of London Road, Marks Tey, Colchester, Essex and Robert Brown, 54, of Canford Cliffs Road, Poole, Dorset, were all
convicted of conspiracy to cheat.

Also convicted were: Walter Alfrey, 56, of Wilson Lane, Marks Tey, Colchester; Brian Walton, 52, of Beechwood Drive, Meopham, Kent; Alistair McLeod, 47, of Berkley Gardens, Leigh-on-Sea, Essex; Sukvinder Singh, 29, of Cranbrook Road, Ilford, Essex; and Terence Amschwand, 57, of Coombe Walk, Yorkletts, Whitstable.

Judge Christopher Elwen said the convictions and sentences of all but Brown had aroused considerable publicity and warned the jury to try Glatt’s case on the evidence they heard in court during his trial.

The trial continues.

ends