How a polo-loving businessman was a secret world drug lord

On the floor, Muhammed Asif Hafeez was an upstanding particular person.

A world businessman and ambassador of a prestigious London polo membership, he rubbed shoulders with the British elite, together with members of the Royal Household.

He additionally frequently handed on detailed info to the authorities within the UK and Center East that, in some instances, led to the interception of big shipments of medicine. He was motivated, he stated, just by what he noticed as his “ethical obligation to curb and spotlight prison actions”.

No less than, that’s what he would have had folks suppose.

In actuality, Hafeez was himself what US officers described as “one of many world’s most prolific drug traffickers”.

From his residence within the UK, he was the puppet-master of an unlimited medication empire, supplying many tonnes of heroin, methamphetamine and cannabis from bases in Pakistan and India that had been distributed the world over. The gangs he knowledgeable on had been his rivals – and his motivation was to rid the market of his rivals.

His standing within the underworld earned him the moniker “the Sultan”.

However this prison energy and status wouldn’t final perpetually. After a posh joint operation between the British and American authorities, Hafeez, 66, was extradited from the UK in 2023. He pleaded responsible final November.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 16 years in a New York jail for conspiring to import medication – together with sufficient heroin for “hundreds of thousands of doses” – into the US. Having been in custody since 2017, Hafeez’s sentence will finish in 2033.

The BBC has intently adopted Hafeez’s case. We’ve pieced collectively info from court docket paperwork, company listings and interviews with individuals who knew him.

We needed to learn how he managed to remain below the radar for therefore lengthy – and the way he ultimately obtained caught.

Hafeez was born in September 1958 to a middle-class household in Lahore, Pakistan. Considered one of six youngsters, his upbringing was snug. Folks in Lahore who knew the household instructed the BBC that his father had owned a manufacturing facility close to town. Hafeez additionally later instructed a US court docket that he had educated as a industrial pilot.

From the early Nineteen Nineties to concerning the mid-2010s, he ran an outwardly respectable umbrella firm known as Sarwani Worldwide Company, with subsidiary companies in Pakistan, the UAE and the UK.

In response to its web site – which has since been shut down – it bought technical gear to militaries, governments and police forces all through the world, together with gear for drug detection.

Among the many different companies below the Sarwani umbrella had been a textiles firm registered in varied international locations, an Italian restaurant in Lahore that was a franchise of a widely known Knightsbridge model, and an organization named Tipmoor, primarily based close to Windsor to the west of London, which specialised in “polo and equestrian providers”.

These companies not solely afforded him a luxurious life-style, however secured him entry to the UK’s most unique circles. He was listed as a global ambassador for the celebrated Ham Polo Membership for a minimum of three years, from 2009 to 2011. He and his spouse Shahina had been additionally photographed chatting to Prince William, and embracing Prince Harry, on the membership in 2009.

Ham Polo Membership instructed the BBC that Hafeez had by no means been a member of the membership, that the membership now not has “ambassadors”, and that the present board “has no ties to him”. It added that the occasion at which Hafeez and his spouse had been photographed assembly the princes “was run by a 3rd social gathering”.

Sarwani’s totally different world arms had been dissolved at varied levels within the 2010s, in response to their listings on Firms Home and equal world registries.

A former Sarwani worker primarily based within the UAE instructed the BBC he suspected there had been “one thing fishy happening” when he labored for the enterprise, as a result of even huge initiatives had been “solely paid for in money”. The worker – who has requested to not be recognized, for worry of reprisals – stated he ultimately left the enterprise as a result of he felt uncomfortable with this.

“There have been no [bank] transactions, no data, no existence,” he instructed the BBC.

Hafeez would additionally periodically write letters to the authorities within the UAE and UK informing on rival cartels, below the guise of being a involved member of the general public.

The BBC has seen these, in addition to letters he acquired in response from the British Embassy in Dubai and the UK Residence Workplace, thanking him and expressing their appreciation for him getting in contact.

The Residence Workplace instructed the BBC it doesn’t touch upon particular person correspondence.

The Overseas, Commonwealth and Growth Workplace and the Authorities of Dubai had been contacted by the BBC for remark however didn’t reply.

Members of Hafeez’s household shared these letters with the BBC in 2018, whereas he was embroiled in a prolonged authorized struggle towards extradition to the US.

Additionally they submitted them to courts within the UK and, later, to the European Court docket of Human Rights (ECHR), as proof that he had been an informant and wanted safety. All of the courts disagreed and dominated that this was a ploy by Hafeez to rid the market of rivals.

Hafeez, the ECHR stated, was “somebody who had dropped at the eye of the authorities the prison conduct of others who he knew to be precise or potential rivals to his substantial prison enterprise”.

Whereas Hafeez was writing these letters, a gathering befell in 2014 that – regardless of him not being there – would result in his downfall.

Two of Hafeez’s shut associates met a possible purchaser from Colombia in a flat in Mombasa, Kenya. They burned a small quantity of heroin so as to display how pure it was, and stated they may provide him with any amount of “100%… white crystal”.

The provider of this high-quality heroin, they’d instructed the customer, was a person from Pakistan generally known as “the Sultan” – that’s, Hafeez.

What they’d quickly be taught was that the “purchaser” from Colombia was truly working undercover for the US’s Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). Your complete assembly was a part of an elaborate sting operation, and had been covertly filmed – footage that has been obtained by the BBC.

US court docket paperwork reveal the deal was co-ordinated by Baktash and Ibrahim Akasha, two brothers who led a violent cartel in Kenya. Their father was himself a feared kingpin who had been killed in Amsterdam’s Purple Gentle District in 2000.

The deal additionally concerned Vijaygiri “Vicky” Goswami, an Indian nationwide who managed the Akashas’ operations.

In October 2014, with the Akashas, Goswami and Hafeez nonetheless unaware of who the consumers actually had been, 99kg of heroin and 2kg of crystal meth had been delivered to the pretend Colombian traffickers. The Akashas promised to offer a whole bunch of kilograms extra of every drug.

A month later, the Akasha brothers and Goswami had been arrested in Mombasa. They had been launched on bail shortly afterwards, and spent over two years combating extradition to the US.

Within the background, American legislation enforcers had been working with counterparts within the UK to piece collectively their case towards Hafeez, partly utilizing proof gathered from gadgets they’d seized once they arrested Goswami and the Akasha brothers. On these, they’d discovered a number of references to Hafeez as a serious provider, and had been capable of finding sufficient proof to determine him as “the Sultan”.

Dealing with prices within the US did not cease one of many males, Goswami, from persevering with his unlawful enterprise. In 2015, whereas on bail in Kenya, he hatched a plan with Hafeez to move a number of tonnes of a drug known as ephedrine from a chemical manufacturing facility in Solapur, India, to Mozambique.

Ephedrine, a strong treatment that’s authorized in restricted portions, is used to make methamphetamine. The 2 males – Goswami and Hafeez – deliberate to arrange a meth manufacturing facility in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, US court docket paperwork present. However their scheme was deserted in 2016, when police raided the Solapur plant and seized 18 tonnes of ephedrine.

The Akasha brothers and Goswami lastly boarded a flight to the US to face trial in January 2017.

Hafeez was arrested eight months later in London, at his flat within the prosperous St John’s Wooden neighbourhood. He was detained at excessive safety Belmarsh Jail in south-east London, and it was from there that he spent six years combating extradition to the US.

A giant growth occurred in 2019 within the US. Goswami pleaded responsible, and instructed a New York court docket he had agreed to co-operate with prosecutors. The Akasha brothers additionally pleaded responsible.

Baktash Akasha was sentenced to 25 years in jail. His brother Ibrahim was sentenced to 23 years.

Goswami, who’s but to be sentenced, would have testified towards Hafeez within the US had the case gone to trial.

From Belmarsh, Hafeez was working out of choices.

He tried to cease extradition to the US – however didn’t persuade magistrates, the Excessive Court docket in London and the ECHR that he had, in reality, been an informant to the authorities who was “vulnerable to ill-treatment from his fellow prisoners” in consequence.

He additionally claimed the circumstances in a US jail can be “inhuman and degrading” for him due to his well being circumstances, together with sort 2 diabetes and bronchial asthma.

He misplaced all of those arguments at each stage and was extradited in Might 2023.

His case didn’t go to trial. In November final 12 months, Hafeez pleaded responsible to 2 counts of conspiring to fabricate and distribute heroin, methamphetamine and cannabis and to import them into the US.

Pre-sentencing, prosecutors described the “extraordinarily lucky circumstances” of Hafeez’s life, which “throw into harsh reduction his determination to scheme… and to revenue from the distribution of harmful substances that destroy lives and entire communities”.

“Not like many traffickers whose drug actions are borne, a minimum of partly, from desperation, poverty, and a scarcity of instructional alternatives,” they stated, “the defendant has lived a life replete with privilege and selection.”