Operation Julie
From CrimeLine from Andrew Keogh
The legal history of money laundering
Operation Julie
"Operation Julie" was a police operation investigating the production of LSD in the 1970s. It resulted in the break-up of one of the largest LSD manufacturing operations in the world at that time. Much of the drug was produced in rural Wales. Chemist Richard Kemp, a graduate of Saint Andrew's University, was the main player behind the operation.
On 26 March 1977 the largest drugs bust in history cracked a drugs ring based near Tregaron. Six million tabs of LSD were recovered by the police. In 1978 the BBC made a documentary about the investigation: Watch the documentary
It was in March 1977 that the police made the largest drugs bust in history and cracked a drugs ring based near Tregaron. Six million tabs of LSD were recovered by the police and120 people were arrested throughout the UK and France. Stashes of LSD worth £100 million were also unearthed and £800,000 in money was discovered hidden in Swiss bank accounts. Eventually 17 defendants were jailed for a total of 130 years in the wake of the investigation code named "Operation Julie".
Read police accounts of Operation Julie
Powers to confiscate from convicted defendants their benefit from crime were first introduced following the failure to recover funds in Operation Julie in 1978 . In this case, some £750,000 of drug trafficking proceeds were traced into the hands of the offenders and restrained. These funds had to be released after the House of Lords held that existing powers to forfeit items used in the commission of an offence could not be used "to strip the drug traffickers of the total profits of their unlawful enterprises." The confiscation regime was introduced in England & Wales by the Drug Trafficking Offences Act 1986. A similar regime was introduced in Scotland by the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1987. Although confiscation was initially available only in drug trafficking cases, it was extended by the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1995 to cover non-drug indictable offences and specified summary offences. In Northern Ireland, powers to confiscate both the proceeds of drug trafficking and other crime were introduced in the Criminal Justice (Confiscation) (Northern Ireland) Order 1990. Most of this legislation has been amended since its introduction and, while some has been consolidated (in, for example, the Drug Trafficking Act 1994, the Proceeds of Crime (Scotland) Act 1995 and the Proceeds of Crime (Northern Ireland) Order 1996),
The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is now used to strip all criminals of their ill-gotton gains.
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