Solicitor 'helped convict to launder £28m'

A corrupt solicitor allegedly helped to launder £28m of "dirty money" from a bootlegging empire run by a jailed gangster from his cell.

A corrupt solicitor allegedly helped to launder £28m of "dirty money" from a bootlegging empire run by a jailed gangster from his cell.

Louis Glatt, 53, set up companies and offshore accounts for Ellis Martin, a criminal mastermind serving a six-year sentence for smuggling, Southwark Crown Court in London was told yesterday.

Unsuspecting prison authorities were duped by Mr Glatt, who disguised members of Martin's gang as his clerks so they could visit the gangster in jail, Oliver Sells QC, for the prosecution, said.

Martin instructed visiting henchmen and ran his empire by making thousands of calls from prison, using phone cards supplied by his solicitor. Mr Sells said: "Between September 1996 and January 1997... Martin made more than 1,000 telephone calls from the prison. Some days he was on the telephone from 8am to 8pm with scarcely a break."

Mr Glatt, of Finchley, north London, denies one count of conspiracy to launder money between 1994 and 1997. The court was told Martin ran a criminal empire that defrauded the public purse of millions of pounds in revenue by smuggling huge amounts of alcohol and tobacco into Britain.

Mr Sells said Mr Glatt knew what his client was doing while he was a free man, during his trial for bootlegging in 1996 and while he was in prison.

The lawyer, who ran a one-man practice in Mayfair,had 25 years of experience and was expected to be trustworthy, Mr Sells said, adding: "He was bound by strict professional rules, by a code of conduct hundreds of pages long."

Mr Sells said he hoped to show that the trust placed in Mr Glatt was "extremely ill-placed". The Crown would try to prove Mr Glatt ignored a court order restraining Martin's assets.

"It was meant to prevent Martin laundering or diminishing or in any way disposing of the proceeds of crime ... yet Martin, with the help of the solicitor, broke those rules time after time after time.

"Not only did he move money, buy properties and deal with bank accounts, together the two of them ... managed to get rid of huge amounts of proceeds of crime," Mr Sells said.

Mr Glatt gave Martin's underworld "cronies" the "utterly deceitful" letters enabling them to pose as solicitors' clerks to visit Martin in jail, said Mr Sells, adding: "Glatt ... crossed the line from being an honest solicitor acting for a criminal, to a corrupt solicitor."

The trial continues.

* Three prison officers appeared in court yesterday accused of corruptly accepting free meals, drinks, computer games and tickets for a major rugby match in return for providing special favours for a prisoner at Elmley jail, Kent.