All language subtitles for Special.Ops.To.Catch.a.Criminal.S01E06.1080p.WEB.h264-CODSWALLOP_[English] (SUBRIP)

PHONE RINGS

Hello, police,
what's your emergency?

Armed police officers!

Elite police units created to crack
the toughest of cases...

My role is investigating serious
and organised crime.

This was out of the ordinary and
this was a high-pressure situation.

Calm yourself down.

..their task, tackle the villains...

You're up for suspicion of murder,
all right?

..and bring them to justice.

A real, "Who did it?"

With unique access to some of
Britain's most-talented detectives,

we explore, for the first time,
their investigations...

Spent years putting together all of
these tiny pieces of evidence.

..their methods...

The most bizarre investigation
I've been involved in.

..and the evidence
that's put some of

the UK's most dangerous criminals
behind bars.

They are clever.
And they're dangerous.

Across the UK, police are dealing
with an epidemic of car crime,

with 2,500 vehicles
stolen each week.

It became clear how busy
they were in offending.

They were stealing cars
almost every night.

Who can steal the most cars?
Who can steal the best cars?

Who can drive the fastest?

And organised crime groups
like these in Manchester

don't even need keys to steal
your precious motor.

The value of the vehicles that
were stolen,

it was well in excess of £4 million
in a ten-month period.

Go on, you know us. Come on.

How people didn't end up
being killed

was just beyond belief, really.

Get him! Ram him now!

Manchester's a great city.
Really diverse.

And it continues to grow and develop
real, different communities

within different types of the city.

And with that come different
challenges around

the crime types that occur.

I'm Roger Smethurst.
I'm a detective inspector within

the Serious
And Organised Crime Group

working for
Greater Manchester Police.

The main aspect of our work
is to target organised crime groups

and individuals who are causing
problems to the local communities.

In September 2022, the Serious
And Organised Crime team receive

intelligence on a gang
of car thieves operating in

the Greater Manchester area.

The TVIU is
the Tactical Vehicle Intercept Unit,

more commonly known by many as
The Interceptors.

They're daily patrolling,
going out there, chasing cars,

so they're able to bring operational
information into the force.

They believed that there were
a group of five or six individuals

who were responsible for
a large number of burglaries,

whereby at least one or two cars
were being stolen every night.

The interceptors have been
investigating an increasing amount

of stolen vehicles across
the region over the past 11 months.

We would get a report of
a burglary overnight,

a vehicle's been taken.

Sometimes, the offenders have been
confronted by the victims.

Sometimes, it would be after
the event where a vehicle

has been discovered stolen in
the morning.

If you're working on this sort
of thing every day,

we start to see trends, patterns,
types of vehicles, the locations.

And, so, a trend developed.

Following the patterns of offending,

patrolling officers
have some suspicions

of who could be behind the crimes.

You get to know
the offenders in the area.

They know how they commit
their crime.

It's through being out on
the streets,

stopping and talking to people,

stopping cars, recognising faces,
knowing what people do.

But the suspects continue to elude

the team with
their reckless driving.

We were involved in a number
of pursuits with cars

that we believe had been stolen
by this group.

Some of those pursuits
were called off,

because of the speeds that
they were driving at

and the areas that
they were operating in

were remote and across the border
into other force areas.

Despite best efforts, they were
making very little progress.

The staff in the team were a little
frustrated that they were unable to

make those links evidentially
and attack the conspiracy.

It became apparent that a lot
of these were already

in trouble with the police,

but because they were being dealt
with in isolation,

the courts weren't seeing
the seriousness of

the offending
being brought together.

And this is where it would bridge
the gap to intelligence and instinct

and experience of officers out
on the ground, patrolling,

into evidence that we can present
before a court.

And that is the expertise of
the Serious Organised Crime Group.

With the suspects still at large
and victims increasing daily,

DI Smethurst launches
Operation Napoleon.

My first steps were to appoint
an investigative team.

So, we identify an officer
who's going to be the officer in

the case, which was Chris.

Detective Constable Chris
is a covert officer working in

the organised crime team.

The first point of call is make sure
the intelligence is correct.

So, here's your intelligence,

here's who we think is committing
the crime together,

can you prove it?

We had a couple of people
who were named as responsible

for this group.

So, we then start to look at who
these people are associating with,

who they're in contact with,

who are they in touch
with on social media?

Police scour social media
to try and link the names

they have to the offending.

We established that
one or two members

weren't particularly that savvy
around how they've got

their settings on
their social media profiles.

Then, we start to see videos
and footage being uploaded

onto social media of what
they believe to be stolen cars

and that really started to give us
our first proper clues.

ENGINE REVS
Yeah, yeah.

It became clear really,
really quickly how busy

they were in offending. And they
might not always go out together,

but they were committing crime
on a nightly basis.

They were stealing high-powered
vehicles from addresses,

so specifically-targeted addresses.

For these really expensive cars,
we had BMWs, Audis, your Mercedes.

Range Rovers were a big favourite.

With a 47% spike
in thefts this year,

Range Rovers topped the list as
the most-stolen car in the UK.

They had stolen a Range Rover SVR,
which was £108,000.

Within an hour they'd stolen
another one, both without keys.

They'd nicked nearly 200 grand's
worth of cars without keys.

Keyless thefts, they call them.

Keyless car thefts are built
upon wireless technology,

so signals from electronic devices

that should be unique to
the vehicle.

But we know that criminals are able
to replicate those devices

and replicate the frequency
that is required to activate

the car's locking system,
for example.

The organised crime team
have unravelled something huge.

So, by late September, I'm getting
briefed by my team that,

"Yeah, we're onto the right people
here. This is a real problem.

"And, actually, boss,
we think it's a bigger problem

"than what we've originally
been told."

And most concerning of all are
the ages of the suspects.

A lot of these are kids.
A lot of them are under 18,

15 to, sort of,
19 was the age range with...

I think there was only two adults.
They knew how to break into cars.

They're really good car thieves.

And, at 15, you shouldn't
really know how to do that.

Sadly, you know, we do see
a significant number of young people

stealing high-powered
motor vehicles,

driving them at excessive speed.

I think young males are attracted
to this sort of crime,

partly because of the exhilaration
of the chase,

driving cars that they probably
wouldn't have access to

through legitimate means.

There is also an attraction to
the money that comes with it.

So, where cars have been passed on
for sale,

they are passed on for a fraction
of what they're actually worth.

In context, that money is
a significant motivator

for young people.

Dealing with kids,
there's going to be

a lot more challenges
than we're used to.

The rules that govern
the courts around juveniles

are really strict,

and you have to tick a lot of boxes
before you remand someone.

You're not going to get these
great sentences,

because the courts' hands are tied.

It's more about rehabilitation
at that point,

to try and get them off that track.

Alongside the shock that
they're dealing with

a highly efficient OCG
run by teenagers,

detectives have to deal with
the impact on the community.

The biggest risk to us
was this group

were almost out of control.

So, all it needed was somebody
to wake up in the middle of

the night, challenge this group
and something could go wrong.

And their worst fears
were soon to be confirmed.

It started with one of the males
snuck out of his care home,

and we knew he snuck out,
because we got CCTV of him doing it,

and he met up with two
of his friends nearby.

They then went and burgled
an address and stole

the VW Golf from that address.

They then drove to a more affluent
area in Manchester,

and they tried to steal
a nice BMW from a house.

This time, they disturbed
their sleeping victim.

He was upstairs in bed

and he had a daughter in his house
that was under one years old.

You can see from
the ring doorbell footage that

the victim chased the four offenders
out of his house

and further down the road.

They seemed to then realise
that there was four of them

and one victim who'd come out of
his house bare chested

and just a pair of pants on.

One of them pulled out what looked
like a large, shiny object,

whether it was a screwdriver
or a knife, we couldn't really tell,

but they then chased the victim back
up the road

and you can hear them from
this ring doorbell footage

shout, "Stab him!"

The victim stood there and pleaded
with him and they stole his car

in front of him anyway.

They drove that car at speed down
the road and crashed it at

the bottom of the road
and they got off and ran away.

In my mind, I only had one decision,

and that was we've got to arrest
people as soon as we can.

Come on.

Officers had to act fast
to stop these reckless youths.

What we see is the videos
of these lads driving at speed.

It went beyond dangerous.

One of them was filming himself
driving whilst smoking cannabis

at 100 miles an hour.

Get him! Ram him now!

Officers of
Greater Manchester Police's

Serious and Organised Crime Team
are on the trail of

a gang of teenage car thieves
who are stealing high-end motors.

We had evidence which identified
two key individuals,

so as a team, we looked at that.

We had to do some research to
convince ourselves

we knew where these people
were living,

cos there's nothing worse than going
trying to arrest somebody,

you miss them, and then you've
almost given them the heads up that

the police are then looking
for them.

The key things for us on arrest were
the seizure of mobile phones

and some electronic devices,

because people are so reliant
now on technology.

Wherever anybody goes,
they take the phone with them.

They record their life
on their phones.

In October 2022,
police make their first arrests.

No comment.
Did you get scared?

No comment.
Do you try and scare him?

No comment.

Dealing with them is not
a nice experience.

Full of attitude,
full of aggression.

Threatened to have a fight
with me on the interview.

And I've never had that, having
dealt with all kinds of people

and these sort of 15-,
16-year-old lads,

small lads, they're not big,

they just have this attitude
that they just don't care.

Go back home, innit?
Start your journey back home, innit?

Go on, you littleBLEEP.

The behaviour within custody
was just appalling.

No respect for the police officers
who were dealing with him,

or the other solicitors.

After hours of interviews
with the suspects,

a charging decision is finally made.

To get a juvenile remanded
in this day and age,

in any day and age,
is really, really tough.

We were able to charge one of them,
but we had to release another one,

which, at the time,
was really frustrating.

When you're trying to
prove conspiracies,

or joint enterprise offences,

it's really hard if one's
in custody and one's not.

But the lad that was released
on bail made it really tough,

because we wanted to keep him tied
in with the lad that was on remand.

This was a huge blow for the team
and the pressure was on.

We urgently started reviewing
his phone download,

"Right, what can we prove
to go and get him back in?"

What they find is a goldmine.

What we see is videos
and we see pictures.

Come on.

The videos of these lads driving
at speed in cars,

or of them posing in front
of cars, or sat in cars.

TTS, as well. Come on.

I've never seen anything like it.

Porsche'll cain you.

He just didn't care.

And when you looked at some of
the overtaking that went on,

it went beyond dangerous.

Some of the driving
that they filmed...

Get him! Ram him now!

..how people didn't end up
being killed

was just beyond belief, really.

I remember one of them was filming
himself driving

whilst smoking cannabis
at 100 miles an hour.

Cutting through traffic,
nearly crashes on one of them.

Wow. My wheels,BLEEP.

They've all got Snapchat accounts,
Instagram, WhatsApp messages.

So, we go from investigating
what we thought at one stage

was perhaps 20 crimes,

and then we're up to anywhere
near 70 or 80 crimes

that these people
are responsible for.

Officers have had a breakthrough
in their investigation,

but not enough to have
the suspects in custody.

We're starting to see this evidence

that corroborates everything
that we've been told.

And you see how brazen,
how violent...

..how dangerous they are.

Ram him now.
No machetes, no machetes.

Ram him now.

It was obvious to us that
the other members of the group

were still out there. They were
still committing burglaries.

They were still nicking cars.

And the fact that we put one
of their mates in prison

didn't seem to bother them one iota.

But their victims were bothered.

The impact of their crimes
were harrowing.

There was a lady whose father
was living at her address,

because he was receiving
palliative care.

The thieves walked past him in
the house.

He saw them, cos he was awake
at the time in the morning.

Because of the shock,
he had to be moved out of the house.

Within a couple of days,
he was dead and his daughter,

who was caring for him,
she didn't see him again.

That really cut her up.
It was awful speaking to her.

It sort of chokes you up when you've
got that human element to it.

Officers had to stop these
youngsters from getting behind

the wheels of any more
stolen motors.

Having reviewed the evidence from
the first couple of arrests

over a ten-day to two-week period,
it's then a case of deciding, right,

we need to go out and arrest
six more people.

So, then we're back in
the boat of making sure

that we don't miss anybody.

We usually build
complex conspiracies

against organised crime groups,
which this lot weren't.

They were that chaotic.

We were working out who was
the most dangerous,

or the one causing the most harm
across Greater Manchester,

and we had to pick them off
that way.

We were trying to build
a conspiracy against them all.

The more that we arrested them
and we recovered their phones,

we started to develop into
a bit more of a group.

The evidence against them
was damning.

Because of the nature of wanting
to be top dog,

or the bragging rights,

they were almost doing things
and then in contact with each other,

which helps us in terms of where
they were at various times.

And we could then start to use
that data

to review it against crimes
that we were seeing occurring.

Come on, the guys.

They're also filming
the interior of the car

to show it off to their friends.

So, from those videos, it's at that
point then that you can start to see

the dashboard or various
other bits within the car.

It might help if there's something
visually unique

the owner knows about the car.

So, there might be particular
stickers in the windscreen,

for example, or marks on the car.

But, ultimately, for us to identify
that car was stolen,

there are numbers permanently
etched into the frame,

into the chassis, that help us to
identify cars forensically.

An item seized from the properties

help confirm the involvement of
the youth.

And then we also had burgling kits
from addresses.

So, a lot more grips.
A lot of builders gloves.

A lot of balaclavas.

And we also had cash
at different scenes,

so kids wouldn't ordinarily have
a lot of cash around them.

It was just bringing
all that together.

Five are now being held,

but the real work is about proving
the broader conspiracy charge.

A lot of the time they were
obviously boasting on the phones,

but to link them all together
as what you would call

an organised crime group,
but an organised crime group,

probably, we couldn't link
some of them together.

So, we knew that they had
access to a vehicle

and we knew that on a certain day

that this vehicle had gone to
the Blackpool area.

So, we put tactics in play,
and we stopped that vehicle

and we stopped it on the motorway
and we got three people inside it.

We'd linked two of them together,
but there was someone we didn't know

that was in that vehicle,

and we then managed to link them
all together,

which was a real bonus for
the investigation.

After four months
solid investigation,

it was good news for the detectives.

It was the 17th December.
We had the last one in custody.

We had arrested all eight of them.

But they still had a lot of work
to do to develop their case.

It took a little bit of the pressure
off, because we realised then,

once they were in prison,

that there aren't any more offences
being committed.

So, it allows us to then slow time,

start to go back through all
the clues we've got,

all the phone evidence we had
to start to try and say,

"Well, what more offences do we know
that have gone on?"

We've got bits of forensic evidence
that we start to recover.

So, we've got some fingerprints
at one of the crime scenes.

We had to re-review all the CCTV,
because we'd taken photographs

of clothing that we'd recovered
from certain addresses.

So, there was some comparison work
done between specifically

some trousers that had some
quite reflective stuff on it,

on certain CCTV cameras,
ring doorbells.

And then we also had some cell site
evidence from their phones

to link them to certain offences.

And mobile phones continue to play
a vital role in linking suspects

to that disturbing night
of offending.

We arrested one of them
and downloaded his phone

at a later date. From the download,
we realised that at a specific point

we could prove he was in the house.
He turned the light on on his phone

for five seconds and we said that
that was when he was looking for

the keys and we said that that was
the point that woke the victim up.

Same lad's health app showed
that he'd walked a certain distance

on his phone,
which linked in almost exactly

to where he lived out of the area.

Roger and his team now had
the challenge of collating

all their evidence
to prepare for trial.

The amount of data we were uploading
onto the court systems was huge.

The number of offences
we were looking at,

I think at one point
we got near 200.

It's really tough to show
all this evidence

when there is so much of it.

So, we decided to try and use
one document per defendant

as, like, a case overview.

"Right, we've got this event
at this address.

"This is what happened and this is
the evidence that we had."

So, we try and keep it to
an A4 side per offence.

So, you might have
a video on a handset.

You might have a video
from Snapchat,

some messages talking about it.

You might have DNA at the scene,
or a fingerprint.

And it's just trying to keep it
as succinct and simple as that.

After months of hard work,
detectives get some good news.

Through that process of presenting
the evidence, the conversations,

when we got to court, we never
actually had to run a formal trial.

Everybody pleaded.

On the 27th July, 2023,
the perpetrators were sentenced.

When you look at the sentences
for juveniles,

the courts are really
under strict guidelines.

So, I personally think that
the courts were as harsh

as possible on the juveniles.

For me, I don't think
they were harsh enough.

For me, it's probably
the most chaotic group that

I've come across in 29 years
of policing.

In their ten-month crime spree,
the teen OCG stole 138 high-end cars

worth over £4 million.

It did amaze me the scale of
the offending.

The value of the vehicles
that were stolen,

the number of houses
that had been broken into

and how often this group
were out committing crime.

And the teens' addiction to their
phones played a massive part

in their conviction.

Oh, yeah. Come on, the guys.

The obsession of youth
and using social media these days

to video their activities,
especially criminal activities,

is slightly beyond me,
in terms of why would you do that?

But it's very helpful for us
as investigators.

They just documented it
themselves, really.

You know, you know us. Come on.

Albeit there was a lot of
work to do,

they did a lot of it for me and made
my job that little bit easier

to prove that they'd done
what they'd done.

Coming up,
when the Serious Fraud Office

gets involved in a case
where money is stolen,

the sums can be eye watering.

They decided to carry on with a hole
in their books and their finances,

and it just mushroomed
and accelerated

into what we came to see.

The company was a massive Ponzi.

A big hole which ended up in
a half a billion debt.

PHONE RINGS

In the high stakes world
of international finance,

there is no such thing as
a victimless crime.

Just because it's a bank, it doesn't
make this any less of a fraud.

But is it Macbeth that says,

"Once you've travelled across
the river of blood so far,

"you might as well continue to
the other side"?

$500 million is quite
a substantial sum.

They were desperate,
completely desperate.

Being a principal investigator
at the Serious Fraud Office,

I see it as a pinnacle of my career.

We deal with the big-ticket frauds,
the most complex frauds.

But I just remember looking
at this going,

"Oh, my God, it's a beast."

And that's why the Serious Fraud
Office does amazing work.

It's not easy stuff. It's not easy.

In early 2013, the financial world
is rocked by news that Balli Steel

has gone bust.

Balli Steel fell into administration
as a result

of a restructuring effort.

The company was unable
to reconcile its finances.

Not being able to reconcile
its finances

is a bit of an understatement.

You could pull out what
the directors sign as

their closing position and that
closing position was stunning.

They owed nearly 500 million.
That's a big collapse.

It's a dramatic fall from grace
for a multinational company

with high-profile board members.

There was a Conservative peer,
Lord Lamont,

who served on its board.
He was a former chancellor.

He resigned three days before the
company brought in administrators.

Around the same time, the Serious
Fraud Office received complaints

from the two banks
concerning Balli Steel.

After some preliminary inquiries,
SFO case controller Ray Chitham

is given the case.

This case arrived with
my case team and I in May 2014.

Rabobank and
the Development Bank of Singapore.

We call them DBS for short.

They make complaints alleging
that Balli Steel had made

misrepresentations in
their trade finance deals

and they had lost
a serious amount of money,

tens of millions of US dollars.

Rabobank and DBS
are missing $120 million,

but their claims may be just
the tip of the iceberg.

Balli Steel were doing hundreds
of deals per year.

So, when they went bust in
the beginning of 2013,

there were approximately
18 trade finance banks across Europe

and the Middle East and
the Far East who had lost money.

Up to about 500 million USD,
which is quite a substantial sum.

Now that Balli has gone bust,

the banks are the ones carrying
the can.

But for the SFO investigators,

the key question now,
is this criminal?

Balli Steel was set up decades
before the allegations of fraud

actually came to light

and it garnered quite
a bit of respectability.

Balli Steel's story begins
with two brothers from Iran.

In 1979, London became a haven
for much of Iran's elite when

the Shah was overthrown by

the religious cleric
Ayatollah Khomeini.

The brothers, they settled in the UK
and they used their contacts in Iran

and around the world
to set up a really successful

group of businesses.
The primary one was Balli Steel.

It was essentially a family-run
business that had grown

significantly over time and,
at one point, this company recorded

$1 billion in turnover
and they lived a lifestyle

equivalent to that.

The premises of the CEO
and other executives was in

the Hampstead area of London,
so very well-to-do and private gates

with very nice cars outside.

The brothers twice made
the Sunday Times' Rich List,

and in 2009 they were estimated
to have a family fortune

of about £130 million.

Along with financial success came,
of course, influence.

The brothers became known
in British society for being patrons

of Iranian art and culture.

They were donors to
the British Museum

and they also were involved in
the Iranian Heritage Foundation.

The brothers appeared to be
flying high,

but when one of them landed
in Switzerland in 2003 to attend

the World Economic Forum in Davos,

he was promptly arrested
and taken to Germany.

So, one of the brothers was arrested
on suspicion of fraud in relation

to Balli's purchase of
a German steelmaker.

He spent about ten months in prison.

The arrest prompted Lord Lamont
to write a letter

to try and win bail
for his business associate.

I think it's fair to say that
the brothers ran things close to

the line, or at least their arrest
in Germany suggests that

they ran things close to the line.

But eventually the company
that filed the criminal complaint

against him withdrew
the allegations,

publicly apologised and shook an
undisclosed settlement with him.

But it took several years
for that process to play out.

The brothers' legal team said
it was a cultural misunderstanding

in terms of the way
the takeover was structured,

but Balli Steel's next run in
would be with

the American government.

In 2010, the Balli business
was fined $15 million

for having violated sanctions.

This involved the export of aircraft
from the United States to Iran.

The business essentially chartered
a handful of 747s

to a private Iranian airline for
their use taking off in Tehran.

The US believed this was an attempt
to break the sanctions

against the Iranian regime
and obtain American technology.

This obviously upset
the US authorities

and Balli ended up paying one of

the largest sanctions-violation
fines in history.

$15 million is a significant loss
for any company,

but could it have been the catalyst
for more wrongdoing,

forcing the brothers to take greater
and greater business risks?

I think a lot of times,
what you see in fraud cases

are people making bad,
pressured decisions

when facing difficult consequences.

By late 2012, some of those bad
decisions were coming home to roost.

So, Balli Steel had been in
the steel-trading industry

since about 1989, being effectively
the intermediary between

the steel manufacturers and
the emerging markets.

So, Brazil, the Middle East
and the Far East.

To pay for these deals, Balli Steel
take out multimillion dollar loans

from banks that specialise in
what is called, "Trade finance."

So, Balli is a middleman.

It ships steel from one country
to another country.

And the reason why you need trade
finance is, in Balli's case,

a lot of the shipments went
from Europe to North Africa.

Now, North Africa,
if they don't pay,

it's going to be difficult
to get your money back.

Their court systems are not
the easiest, etc.

Balli mitigates against that risk
by getting banks to finance the deal

while the steel is in transit.

Provided the documents say
there is a supplier,

there is a customer,
there's shipping documents,

there's no risk here for the bank.

If the customer doesn't pay,
or something goes wrong,

there's steel on a boat,
the bank has that steel.

It owns that steel.
So, they get this warm feeling.

"Oh yeah, I'm going to earn a bit
of interest, some fees,

"for lending some money on
a very low-risk transaction."

It's the fundamentals
of international trade.

That's how it's worked
for 20 years, or so.

But now, Balli is bust and the banks
want to know what's happened

to their money.

So, in September 2012,

Rabobank started to have
some suspicions

about Balli Steel and
the trades they were involved in.

When we looked at
the books and records,

to find a deal that was
totally clean was difficult.

In fact, we didn't.

It's 2014,
and the Serious Fraud Office

is investigating international
steel trader Balli Steel

for a multi-million dollar fraud.

The scale of this case
and its international aspects

meant that we needed to contact
the suppliers of steel.

They're typically not in the UK.
There's the customers of the steel,

they're not in the UK,
there's the bank accounts,

of which many are not in the UK.

Before long, the team discovered
that Balli Steel's problems began

around the same time it was forced
to pay a $15 million fine to

the US government.

Here, it went obviously very wrong,
because they stopped repaying

those short-term loans to
the banks on time.

And, as that grew, these loans
started to default

and it became a situation
of what's called a Ponzi scheme,

where they're robbing Peter
to pay Paul.

So, Balli Steel were approaching
new lenders,

getting in new funds
and paying off old debt.

And they had time to do this,
because the banks will give you

these funds for about 180 days,
before you're expected to

pay it back once
the steel has been sold.

So, there's
a lot of spinning plates.

At its simplest, this Ponzi scheme
involves paying existing banks

in a steel deal with funds
collected from new banks

in a separate steel deal.

The gamble that Balli was taking
was that they would repay the loans

and make enough profit to eventually
balance the books.

Well, this is actually a good basis

to launch
an investigation prosecution,

because they're not telling
the banks

that we're actually paying off
another bank,

because we owe them.
And, clearly, that's not right.

But this was just
the first level of fraud that

the team will discover.

Then, we go to level two, I'd say.

In September 2012, Rabobank
started to have some suspicions

about Balli Steel.

Netherlands-based Rabobank
had loaned money for several deals

of Balli, but one shipment
had run into problems.

Rabobank wanted to find out what
was happening to the steel trades.

Were they going to be liquidated?

Were they going to get
their money back?

Rabobank suspects Balli has sold
the steel without telling them.

Transocean Navigation, which was
a Cayman Islands freight company,

it was, from the start,
a company of interest.

Transocean Navigation
was critical to this fraud.

The banks believed it was
independent freight company

providing genuine documents.

They relied on that documentation.

A bill of lading is fundamental
to these transactions,

cos it shows where
the steel's been shipped,

the name of the ship,
the journey that ship will take,

and, crucially, at the top of
the bill of lading,

it will say consigned to,
let's say, ABF bank.

ABF Bank will want to see its name
on that bill of lading

consigned to ABF Bank.

What is this company?
It's in the Cayman Islands.

Obviously, as the SFO,
we have the powers to get

in behind
these Cayman Island companies,

which I found exciting,
because in my past life,

it's very difficult to get
behind these shells.

But here at the SFO,
you can get behind them

and you can understand them.

And, in essence, Transocean
Navigation was a fax machine.

So, the employees at Balli
would send a fax to

the Cayman Islands' offshore agent,
who managed Transocean Navigation,

saying, "Please, send this
to Bank A," and they would.

That document would be,
"This steel is in Dubai."

"The steel is in Oman."
"The steel is in Egypt."

That's what
Transocean Navigation did.

And at least one bank realised
this was suspicious.

Transocean Navigation was nothing
more than a shell company

set up by the brothers to fool the
banks and facilitate their fraud.

There was no steel.
The steel had been sold

and Balli Steel had used the
proceeds to pay off...further debt.

The problem is,
you actually have to ship steel

and sell it to get the money.
That takes time.

But if you're in a Ponzi
and you're desperate for money,

you don't have that time.

So, then they reached,
I call it, Defcon level five.

So, they came up with, what we
called in the team, a no-steel deal.

One particular,
egregious deal involved

a company in Chicago, Illinois,
the US, a company called Magellan,

and the bank involved there at

the end of that 180-day period
said to Balli,

"Where's the steel?"
Or, "Where's the money?"

Balli didn't respond.

So, we talked to an executive
at Magellan who said,

"I had no dealings with Balli
for this deal.

"That's not my signature
on that contract.

"That's a fake contract. And we
wouldn't even buy that steel."

So, they would pretend to buy steel,
but there is no steel.

That's when this company
is near collapse.

They were desperate.
Completely desperate.

Maybe they thought there
would be some magic tree at

the end of this that would
rescue them all.

But is it Macbeth that says,

"Once you've travelled across
the river of blood so far,

"you might as well continue to
the other side"?

To see a venerable, well-established
company involved in wrongdoing

of this size,
over this period of time,

is something quite unique.

After a two-year investigation,
the brothers,

along with two other Balli
executives, are arrested.

The main suspects in this case was
the CEO. He really ran the show.

But you couldn't do
this fraud on your own.

It was too big.
There's too much going on.

It was a conspiracy
between senior executives.

Their legal advisor was given
details of the evidence

and all of these questions
were put to the suspects

and they answered, "No comment."

The suspects are charged,
but the case will not go to court

for almost six years.

This is a complex case and always
the challenge in the back

of our minds was,
"How do we explain this to a jury?"

However, the no-steel deals really
gave the team a lot of impetus,

cos the jury is going to find that
a lot easier to understand.

It's going to be a complex case,

but before the trial even begins,
the CEO decides to plead guilty.

If someone pleads guilty beforehand,

it is a huge boost to
the prosecution

and investigation team, because
effectively there's been a fraud.

Jurors were told that essentially
one of the people in the conspiracy

had pled guilty to that conspiracy.

The downside, of course,
is the individuals in the dock

can say,
"Well, it's not me, it's him."

Their defence was that they
didn't know what was going on.

They said that they were just taking
orders from the chief executive.

But the SFO team find compelling
evidence to show how

the lieutenants of the company
were directly involved.

One of the executives who was head
of trading, she, on a no-steel deal,

prepared the sales contract
which was sent to the bank.

She had hijacked company details off
the internet

to put on a contract of purchase,

and that contract would be used
to show the bank

that there was a customer and
therefore the steel would be sold.

Unfortunately for that lady,
she picked the wrong logo from

the internet,
because the bank thought it was

this company in Qatar.

But the logo was taken
from a company in Saudi Arabia.

I guess when you're under
the pressure of continuing

a big Ponzi, you make mistakes
and you think,

"Oh, my God,
that's really stressful."

You actually don't see that
in the emails.

You'd think they'd be like,
"Oh," pulling their hair out.

"This is terrible."
But you don't get that impression.

In fact, the CEO was really calm.
He's absolutely ice cool.

In April 2023, two Balli executives
were found guilty

and sentenced to just over
three years in prison.

One brother, who was chairman, was
ultimately too ill to stand trial,

while the other brother,
who was CEO, pled guilty

and was sentenced to 6.5 years.

I think the verdicts are important.
It shows you've done your job well.

A lot of frauds probably don't get
reported through embarrassment,

and maybe they were hoping
that that would happen.

But I've got to congratulate
the banks in this case for reporting

this fraud,
because it's a serious fraud

and it affects international trade.

Banks have individuals
who represent the bank.

And when you're talking about
huge losses like this,

then obviously it does affect
them personally.

This is not a victimless crime.
We all have our money in banks.

And the losses incurred by banks

are ultimately charged
onto customers, potentially.

And we all pay the price for that.

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