WPC 'helped father in pounds 20m gold conspiracy'

A policewoman helped her father in a pounds 20m operation to smuggle 24-carat gold ingots from Belgium to Britain through the Channel ports, a court was told yesterday.

Constable Lucy Gilmore, 25, allegedly travelled with her father to the Continent "every other weekend" to bring back the one-kilogram bars.

Knightsbridge Crown Court was told that on each occasion the bullion was concealed in cars and never declared to Customs and Excise for Value Added Tax purposes.

It was then sold on by others involved in the 18-month conspiracy, possibly making more than pounds 3m profit in the process because of the VAT that was then paid by the new owners, it was alleged.

Ms Gilmore, 25, of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, and another alleged courier in the operation Surrinder Kumar, 32, of Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, deny a joint charge of conspiracy to cheat by evading payment of VAT on the imported bullion.

Peter Rook QC, for the prosecution, told the jury that Ms Gilmore's father Michael, 53, of Craithie, Aberdeenshire, had admitted his part in the affair.

Normally, because the price of gold was the same across the world, it did not make commercial sense to import it from abroad, he said. It only proved profitable when gold could be obtained from a tax-free source, smuggled abroad and then sold on with VAT added on.

Mr Rook said Belgium normally imposed only 1 per cent VAT on the precious metal, but it was the Crown's case the smugglers avoided paying even that by pretending the real purchaser was an overseas businessman trading from Dubai.

He said Mr Gilmore, one of a number of couriers, was accompanied to Belgium by his daughter, who was stationed at Telford in the West Midlands at the time, on at least four occasions towards the latter end of the conspiracy, which was ended in January 1993.

"It is the prosecution's case that when she accompanied her father she knew what was afoot and she was thereby assisting her father as courier," Mr Rook said.

He alleged Kumar was "one of the most prolific couriers", taking cash abroad and bringing gold back.

He acted as a "trusted lieutenant" to his elder brother, Jeevan Kanda, "the moving spirit behind this fraud".

Both men, he said, were involved in the jewellery business in the Midlands. Both Kanda and his girlfriend, another alleged courier, were now somewhere abroad.

Investigators had failed to discover the precise destination of the gold after it arrived in Britain, although Ms Gilmore allegedly told her former boyfriend Robert Davis that its eventual destination was Birmingham.

Mr Rook said Mr Davis, a trial witness, would tell the court how she travelled to Belgium with her father as often as every other weekend.

Mr Rook said that in one of her letters to her then boyfriend Ms Gilmore spoke of a trip to Belgium being a "change from my normal tedious routine" which would "give me a little extra cash".

"Why would Lucy Gilmore be receiving a little extra cash for going on a trip with her father?" he asked.

Mr Rook said all the gold was paid for in cash in Belgium, with a Birmingham deposit box being used to keep it in before the purchases were made.

A total of 107 gold purchases had been made in Belgium, Mr Rook said, after which it was smuggled by ferry or hovercraft through Dover and Sheerness using Audi and Volvo cars. Forensic tests revealed traces of "high purity" gold in a number of the cars.

The trial continues today.