Ramzan, Amer

Amer Ramzan was convicted in June 2002 at Leeds Crown Court of conspiracy to launder the proceeds of drug trafficking and received a sentence of 12 years’ imprisonment.

The CCRC received an application for review of the conviction in November 2002.

This was one of a series of linked cases where applicants to the CCRC had been convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering offences.

All of the cases referred by the CCRC have been of persons convicted not of the substantive offence but conspiracy to commit the offence.

During review, the CCRC considered the decisions in the cases of R v Harmer and R v Ali and others.

In Ali (a case that arose from the same HM Customs & Excise investigations as those that gave rise to Mr Ramzan’s case and involved an alleged conspiracy of the same nature), the court observed a House of Lords ruling that a person could not be guilty of a section 49(2) Drug Trafficking Act 1994 offence unless the prosecution could prove that the proceeds involved were the proceeds of drug trafficking.

The jury in Mr Ramzan’s case were directed by the judge that suspicion that the proceeds were illicit was enough to convict.

Although these directions were sound at the time, given the court’s conclusions in Ali that suspicion was not enough to secure a conviction, there was a real possibility the Court of Appeal would consider Mr Ramzan’s conviction unsafe.

The CCRC referred the conviction in August 2005.

The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction in July 2006 and ordered a retrial.