Hatton Garden raider ‘Basil’ faces order to pay back £6m

Only about £4.5m of the £13.6m property stolen in the 2015 heist has been recovered

Michael Seed, known as "Basil", who is in jail for his role in the 2015 Hatton Garden heist. (Metropolitan Police/PA)

The youngest member of the Hatton Garden raid gang could be ordered to pay back almost half of the £13.6m stolen in the heist.

Michael Seed, known as Basil, was jailed for a decade in March 2019 after becoming the tenth person convicted over the notorious 2015 Easter Bank Holiday burglary.

Prosecutors told Wooldwich Crown Court the 59-year-old alarm specialist should pay back £5.9m allegedly hidden in assets and non-returnable items.

Seed is believed to have let himself into the building in London’s diamond district using a set of keys before defeating the security system.

He was one of two men who climbed into the vault to loot 73 safe deposit boxes after the gang of veteran criminals drilled through a thick concrete wall.

Seed evaded capture for three years before police raided his flat in Islington, north London, in March 2018.

During his trial, he told jurors he was not the accomplice nicknamed Basil by the rest of the gang – and claimed he could have been on a family holiday in Cornwall or visiting his elderly mother in Cambridge at the time of the raid.

But he was found guilty of conspiracy to burgle Hatton Garden Safe Deposit and conspiracy to handle the proceeds after £143,000 of gold ingots, gems and jewellery was found in his bedroom.

Police believe he had been melting down gold and breaking up jewellery on his bedroom workbench bit by bit as it was brought in from a bigger stash.

Only about £4.5m of the £13.6m property stolen in the heist was ever recovered.

Prosecutor Philip Evans QC told the confiscation hearing on Wednesday that the court has to decide if Seed had a criminal lifestyle, what the benefit was, and whether he gained from it.

He added: “There is simply no supporting evidence of the defendant’s assertion that he was running a jewellery business.”

Mr Evans said Seed has not declared tax on any earnings, or “produced to date a single” invoice, business receipt, bank transfer or name of a customer or anything that backs up his claim he was running a jewellery business.

Richard Sutton QC, defending, said Seed had been living a “fairly modest lifestyle” which could have been funded by small business.

Seed’s lack of paperwork including tax payments is something that would lead to a financial penalty and not a prosecution, the court heard

CCTV screengrab dated 3 April 2015 of the heist at Hatton Garden Safe Deposit, which is believed to show Michael Seed. (Metropolitan Police/PA)

His fellow Hatton Garden ringleaders Brian Reader, 80, John “Kenny” Collins, 78, Daniel Jones, 64, and Terry Perkins, who died in prison last year aged 69, were all jailed in 2016.

Detectives believe the gang may have been operating undetected for decades before they were caught, but cannot link them to any other crimes.

Seed travelled abroad three times after he was first photographed meeting Collins by a surveillance team in the weeks after the Hatton Garden burglary, while he was unknown to police.

The prosecution at his trial suggested Seed, who studied electronics and physics at Nottingham University, may have taken stolen cash to Portugal, where Perkins had a holiday flat on the Algarve.

The ruling on the confiscation order will take place at a later date yet to be fixed.

Additional reporting by Press Association