Smuggler who made $500M jailed in U.K.

Press, 18 February 1980, Page 9

Smuggler who made $500M jailed in U.K.

NZPA London British Customs men have finally closed the trap on the man who for 10 years was one of the world’s richest and most successful drug smugglers. ■ ; • Mohammed Ashfaque Khan, who began as a Karachi construction worker and ended up building himself a $5OO million fortune, was caught after a four-year world-wide operation organised by the international police organisation Interpol involving investigators from 12 countries.

Khan has been jailed for seven years by the Crown Court at Reading, west of London. Two of his lieutenants, his cousin, Mohamed Ishfaque Khan, and a 25-year-old Canadian, Dian Edelman, who had both denied conspiring with him, were each jailed for five years. The trail which led to Khan’s appearance in court, where he admitted taking part in a drug-smuggling conspiracy, began in Paris in 1976.

There Interpol called a meeting of Customs investigators from the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark,

West Germany, France, Finland, Pakistan, and Britain in an attempt to break up the Khan connection.

For years, Khan had been suspected of being; a big cannabis smuggler, but he had managed to elude enforcement agencies around the world. By the time of the Paris meeting, British Customs men had already been working for 18 months building up a dossier on the syndicate. Their first big break did not come, however, until September, 1978, when a shipper in Karachi was arrested and provided evidence about Khan.

Khan was picked up, charged, and is said to have confessed to a huge number of shipments. But he was given bail and fled to Dubai, and after a brief interval he was back in business .as usual.

In April last year Interpol called another conference, this time joined by investigators from the United States, Belgium, and Switzerland, and later the following month Khan and his lieutenants were arrested in an hotel near Heathrow Airport.