The preliminary chain of events went like this:

• An American involved in criminal activities, and who needed to clean his dirty cash,  Scott Errico, was arrested at Heathrow with a large amount of money; he had been dealing with a British laundryman named Patrick Diamond, who utilised companies organised in the Isle of Man in the service of his clients. The American law enforcement activity was later designated " Operation Man," Errico disclosed Diamond's name to Scotland Yard.
• Mr. Diamond, upon his arrest, cooperated with authorities, and named an obscure British accountant located in the British Virgin Islands named Shaun Murphy, as a key figure in money laundering operations at that location. Diamond & Murphy had apparently worked together on many laundering matters.
• When law enforcement agents executed a search warrant at Murphy's company in Tortola, Financial Management & Trust, they uncovered a treasure trove of evidence showing that Murphy was laundering drug profits for American traffickers. In due course, they shared this information with the Drug Enforcement Agency, the US Customs Service (now ICE), and the Internal Revenue Service.
• Murphy, threatened with prison, immediately began to cooperate with the authorities. He was never charged with any crime*, due to the substantial assistance he rendered.
• One of the gems that Murphy imparted to law enforcement was that there was massive money laundering activity occurring on the nearby island of Anguilla, a British Dependent territory that had enacted its own Confidential Relationships (bank secrecy) Act a few years prior.
• Armed with that inside knowledge, Scotland Yard shifted their focus on Anguilla. A joint task force working out of the FBI office in Miami was composed of experienced Bureau agents and their Scotland Yard partners. It is also important to know that these British agents had been specially deputised to give them arrest powers in the UK British territories, which were autonomous, except for foreign affairs and national defence.

Readers of this series know that I had been moving illicit cash into Anguilla for several years, was a regular weekly visitor to its offshore banks and solicitors' offices, and believed that my low-key operation had gone unnoticed in the US.

Having stumbled providently into Anguilla, it didn't take long for law enforcement to realise that Her Majesty's Constitutional Advisor, William ( Billy) Herbert, who was an experienced criminal defence lawyer, stood at the centre of the money laundering activity. A visit to his office (chambers) in the country's sleepy capital, the Valley, soon produced results in a strange manner.

Some of this is second-hand information, but its truth has been confirmed.               

• Herbert, when threatened with criminal charges, immediately undertook a week-long "vacation" in the United States. That way, he could later claim that he failed to cooperate, and was actually absent at the time of the law enforcement investigation and presence in his chambers.
• In his absence, law enforcement thoroughly read each and every file in his office, and identified all companies he had formed that were owned or controlled by US citizens or residents.
• Armed with those names, all bank accounts of companies so identified as having American owners were frozen, irrespective of whether there was any proof of illegal activity, or criminal profits in those accounts.
• These accounts represented many millions of dollars, (dollar-denominated accounts being allowed under local law) of several of my clients' funds.

To say that this was a total shock, not only to me, but to my clients as well, is an understatement. I simply had to get that money unfrozen.

Next Week: a look back at a special NBFI. 

In Two Weeks; the story continues.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *I did see him in a few subsequent interviews, where his face was not shown. I understand he has changed his appearance. He was reportedly deported from St. Lucia when his BVI activities became known. I wonder what obscure island he calls home today.