EXCLUSIVE: I'm too poor to pay back my illegal profits, says gang boss Terry Adams

 
TERRY ADAMS AFTER HIS HIGH CT CASE TODAY PICTURE JEREMY SELWYN 10/07/2013
11 July 2013
WEST END FINAL

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Britain's most feared gangster is claiming he is too poor to pay back his illegal profits despite evidence that he enjoys an “extravagant” lifestyle funded by vast hidden wealth.

Terry Adams, the head of a notorious north London crime gang, made his plea of poverty at the High Court after lodging documents stating that he cannot afford to meet unpaid debts to the taxpayer of more than £600,000.

But prosecutors said it was “inconceivable” that Adams - who was previously exposed for splashing out on cosmetic surgery, a Cartier watch and country club membership with undisclosed funds - was so poor.

They argued instead that Adams had “extended capital” and accused him of using “associates and sham companies” to conceal his wealth as they called on the judge to reject the crime boss’s attempt to have his debts written off.

The disclosures follow a call by Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe for an overhaul of the law to allow criminals who fail to repay their debts to be kept in prison until they hand over the money.

They came as Adams, who hung a screen print of Al Pacino in The Godfather on the living room wall of his £1.6 million former Mill Hill home, appeared at the High Court to apply for a “certificate of inadequacy” that would write off all or part of his debts.

He currently owes £616,812 of a confiscation order of £750,000 that was imposed after his conviction at Blackfriars Crown Court in 2007 for conspiring to conceal the proceeds of criminal conduct over a six year period.

He was also ordered to pay prosecution costs of £50,000 and the £4.6 million bill for his publicly funded defence after the court was told that he had amassed what a judge later described as a “considerable fortune” from his life as “a highly successful career criminal” over a “significant” period of time.

At yesterday’s hearing, however, prosecuting barrister Kennedy Talbot submitted a document to the judge, Mr Justice Nicol, revealing that 58-year-old Adams now claims to be too poor to pay his debts.

Mr Talbot said that Adams, who was later driven off in an upmarket black Lexus car, would have to prove his poverty, but warned that a witness statement submitted by prosecutors would argue that the facts did not support such a claim.

“The witness statement raises a strong case that Terry Adams has substantial undisclosed assets: it is inconceivable that a person would live the apparent extravagant lifestyle disclosed by the Crown Prosecution Service’s evidence without extended capital available to him,” he said.

“The CPS’s evidence is consistent with the original criminal case against Adams of concealing his own proceeds of crime through associates and sham companies. The court should therefore refuse Adams’ application.”

Mr Justice Nicol adjourned the hearing until October to allow both Adams and prosecutors to submit further evidence. He told Adams that he must attend and be ready to be cross-examined about his finances.

The latest court appearance by Adams comes only 20 months after he was convicted at Westminster magistrates’ court of breaching a financial reporting order imposed alongside the original seven year prison sentence he was given in 2007.

The order required Adams, whose notorious crime gang has been nicknamed “The A Team” or “Adams Family”, to report all spending over £500 to the Serious Organised Crime Agency for ten years.

Prosecutors revealed that he had flouted the order repeatedly, however, by using hidden funds for a series of expensive purchases made on his behalf by his wife Ruth or other associates.

These included a pioneering non-surgical facelift at the Harley Street Medical Skin Clinic, which cost £7,500, and membership for him and his wife of the exclusive Grove Hotel Spa country club in Hertfordshire. Adams also spent £2,200 in a police auction buying back a Cartier watch that was confiscated from him before his original conviction.

Adams’ lawyer told that hearing that the crime boss, who has claimed to have ended his illegal activities, was a “broken man” who was living off the lawfully obtained and “dwindling” capital of his wife.

But the judge said that Adams was a “shrewd and calculating” man who had wilfully and arrogantly tried to evade the financial curbs imposed on him.

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