Ali Moulaye: The man, the myth and the method

In this first episode of season 2 we discuss Ali Moulaye, the man whose signature is at the base of Companies House account filings for a multiplicity of LLPs identified as being involved in a wide variety of laundromats. And it's quite a story!

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spk_1:   0:18
Hello and welcome to Episode one of Season two of the Dark Money Files in which we shine a light into a murky world. I'm Ray Blake. On With Me is my co host friend and business partner. Grand Barrow Telegram

spk_0:   0:31
High right

spk_1:   0:32
Season two Grown. Is that the last 13 weeks ago?

spk_0:   0:37
No, they certainly haven't been boring. Ray. With 10 episodes covering the Danske Bank affair and then three specials, it's been quite a start to the year.

spk_1:   0:45
And can I remind you, Graham, that originally we were gonna cover the dance school report in three episodes?

spk_0:   0:51
Yeah, that didn't quite work out as planned. There was just so much to talk about in the end.

spk_1:   0:57
Indeed, I know from feedback that some of those episodes now being used by training departments in a lot of banks to help their colleagues understand some of these elements using real life examples Episode three in particular, where we looked at the transactional activity in dance. CA has been a particular hit

spk_0:   1:13
you and it's great getting that feedback, isn't it, Ray? And if anyone out there wants to send in their own dark money file storeys, we'd love to feature them in future episodes of the podcast.

spk_1:   1:24
Definitely e mails to the dark money files at gmail dot com, or message either of us on LinkedIn. Twitter. Just a caveat. We don't promise to use any of your storeys. And we do actually have quite a high threshold for evidence before we'll say anything publicly on this podcast.

spk_0:   1:41
Yeah, that's very okay. So let's talk about this first episode of season to them.

spk_1:   1:49
Well, given that you asked me to do a bit of background research on Ali Mul LAE, I presume it's all about him, then.

spk_0:   1:55
Yes. And just before we explain for those of you who don't know exactly who Ali moonlight is, do you want to tell them this is what I asked you to do? And what you found out is that would be very helpful in putting the storey into context.

spk_1:   2:07
Yes, Graham, you asked me to look online for any mention of alley move, lay in the context of signing accounts or other involvement in corporate activity. Prior to October 2017

spk_0:   2:18
I did. And what did you find me?

spk_1:   2:21
I managed to find one mention that was hidden away in a legal judgement in November 2015. It was quite amusing for a legal judgement, a

spk_0:   2:30
sentence not commonly uttered. Why was that?

spk_1:   2:35
There were 14 respondents in the case. All of tha mu k l L PS two had accounts signed by Sabine Bos one by your IV Bittman Onda 11 by Ali. Move away.

spk_0:   2:48
So when we get there, right, 14 respondents in one case or separate respondent on yet 11 of the LPs or had accounts signed by

spk_1:   2:59
Oh, yes, I guess I I chuckle. Yeah, I'll be honest. It's

spk_0:   3:04
quite a coincidence, isn't it?

spk_1:   3:06
Yeah. Yeah, it's a coincidence, particularly since that is the only time he gets any mention anywhere on the Web that I could find prior to 2017. And he's 11 times in that. Well, that's quite an arrival. Very much

spk_0:   3:25
so. 14 LPs in this court case. So I think maybe before we go any further, we should perhaps give a bit more background tuk LPs And why having signed 11 off, Mr Mulally doesn't actually appear anywhere in the company's house website.

spk_1:   3:44
Well, yeah, that's a good idea. Shall I kick that off?

spk_0:   3:47
Yeah. There you go.

spk_1:   3:48
Okay. Limited liability partnerships. Since we've mentioned before are a kind of hybrid between a general partnership which has no legal standing in its own right. Onda Limited Company, which has both limited liability Onda share capital LPs retain the benefits of a partnership. So it's not taxable in itself. But it also has limited liability so that each partner is not responsible for the debts of others as they would be in a general partnership.

spk_0:   4:19
Fantastic race. So why don't we see more of them?

spk_1:   4:23
Because they can only be used for profit making organisations and tend to be used by professional service companies rather than trading companies.

spk_0:   4:30
Okay, so so what are the basic requirements for an LP?

spk_1:   4:35
Well, they must have at least two members, but they can have as many as they like the the LP muster. All times have at least two designated members who were legally responsible for meeting the filing requirements, recordkeeping on another compliance stuff. It also needs to declare one or more persons with significant control, which is effectively the owner or controller of the company, as distinct from the members who are responsible for running the company administratively. Okay, Anything else? Well, they're gonna have a registered office in the UK, but they can have overseas members who can also themselves be legal entities.

spk_0:   5:18
Okay, so for SOM, the only touch point with the UK is the registered office Onda, Of course. The company's House filings.

spk_1:   5:27
Yes, because the limited liability partnership isn't taxed as an entity. It doesn't need to file tax returns with HMRC.

spk_0:   5:35
Okay, so Companies House maintains details of the designated members registered office, the person with significant control on the partnerships, annual accounts and other filings. Exactly. But what they don't do is record the name of the person who actually signs the accounts.

spk_1:   5:54
Graham. They don't even require the signatory to print under their signature, although lots dough. But you regularly find accounts where the signature is indecipherable and there's no name to go with it.

spk_0:   6:06
I know Ray, and it's testament to my somewhat obsessive nature that I have a folder on my desktop off screen grabs of every common signature I see which does have the name printed underneath. It's surprisingly helpful. Sometimes

spk_1:   6:19
I'm gonna take your word for that ground

spk_0:   6:22
due back to Mr Move Away.

spk_1:   6:25
Other than this one court case within which Mr Mulally figures quite prominently. I couldn't find much else. Mind you. After October 2017 there was loads.

spk_0:   6:37
And why was that?

spk_1:   6:39
Some bloke grown article about

spk_0:   6:43
baby then? Yeah, but I'm going to be on this, right? I just never expected it to take off in the way that it did.

spk_1:   6:52
Do you want to explain why you wrote that article on what Alan Mulally's rolling it? Wass?

spk_0:   6:57
Yes. My starting point was looking at the role of UK LPs in the Deutsche Bank Mirror Trade Storey, which we have referred to before. My attention was caught by the fact that these two companies, which were called Chappelle Trade LP and Ergo Invest LP, managed to file completely identical accounts. And I mean identical. I mean, the same turn over the same profit, everything. And both were signed by Mr Moon.

spk_1:   7:25
Okay. I mean, that's old, but it's not exactly earth shattering.

spk_0:   7:30
I agree. But as I dug further, I kept finding other LPs whose accounts were also signed by him until it just started turning into an avalanche.

spk_1:   7:42
How many says she think he signed then?

spk_0:   7:44
Well, Ray, I found 30 different cos he signed on behalf ofthe between them the actors designated members, actually for more than 6000 l L. Peas. But given that there's always 22 a two designated members to let l pay, he's actually probably signed for 3000 and he's been doing that for a round seven years, So I reckon at least 20,000 sets of accounts.

spk_1:   8:11
I mean, that's extraordinary, isn't

spk_0:   8:13
it? Yeah. What's even Mohr extraordinary is that every set I've seen, every set have been produced on exactly the same template on almost all of them show and your commission off between 5000 and £25,000 sometimes a bit more often a bit less, but mostly between those figures.

spk_1:   8:34
So does that mean that Ali and his friends only deal with companies that expect to turn over between five grand and 25 grand here? Great.

spk_0:   8:42
Um, well, there is one way of looking at it, right, But I'm not sure it's the right one.

spk_1:   8:49
Well, I mean, you know, accountants do tend to specialise in a particular niche. Don't know, but, I mean, the alternative would mean that they're filing false accounts.

spk_0:   9:00
Yeah. What is the alternative?

spk_1:   9:03
Okay. Back to the article. You still haven't explained why it's now the number one search returned for Mr

spk_0:   9:09
Mulally. Yeah. What? During my research, I found this company called Lantana Tried LP, which actually we mentioned last week on which had accounts signed by him. And as we said on last week's podcast, that was the company which led to the whistleblower outing, Danske Bank and all the attendant publicity, which rather propelled our alley into the limelight.

spk_1:   9:31
Well, that explains its popularity. But there's also a storey by buzzfeed news up there. I noticed you were quoted in that account as well. What was that about?

spk_0:   9:40
All right, I had this idea for a storey which was just focusing on a small set of NLP is which Ali had signed the accounts for On that idea was taken up by Jane Bradley at Buzzfeed and Oliver Bullough, who wrote Money Land. And then Jane had the idea of seeing if we could actually find him on the three of us spent a few weeks trying to track him down,

spk_1:   10:00
Which he did

spk_0:   10:01
yes, to a dental surgery in a suburb of Brussels.

spk_1:   10:05
Well, obviously

spk_0:   10:07
Well, yes, but

spk_1:   10:09
what I found astonishing reading that article was just how many different schemes appear to have used entities for which Alley signed the account's

spk_0:   10:18
exactly and that I think, provides a really useful insight into how laundromats work go on? Well, realistically, I don't think Ali are all the other people involved in creating these companies, other one's actively involved in the crime or the corruption that generates the money. It's just physically impossible for them to have hands in so many geographically diverse enterprises.

spk_1:   10:41
I agree his name has been on LP is used in the Russian laundromat. There's about Johnny Laundromat, Danske Bank that Deutschen mirror trades and a whole host more. It's just not feasible that is across all of that.

spk_0:   10:55
Exactly, which means that, wittingly or unwittingly on, I think I know where my money is Here. Hey is part of an enterprise which is being used by a wide variety of corrupt or criminal enterprises. To launder money on their behalf

spk_1:   11:10
is the only answer. Which makes any sense to May. The level of commonality of both his name and the names of a relatively small number of entities used his designated members. I just can't really be explained any other way agreed, so back to Mr Move, like trying to explain how he managed to find him.

spk_0:   11:30
Yeah, it was on social Media. By and large, Ray, our first sighting was on linked in where I found an Alan Mulally based in Latvia.

spk_1:   11:40
That fear you say

spk_0:   11:41
yes, home to some legendary names in money laundering, like Stan Goran and Eric Vanna, girls whose names appear all over the world in corporate registries on DH, in abundant number of newspaper storeys.

spk_1:   11:56
And from there

spk_0:   11:57
from there we found him on a government database in Latvia, where he'd registered a marriage agreement, which included his wife's maiden name. Unfortunately, she loved her social media posts and was he wasn't very careful with her privacy settings and ahs a consequence her page was open to all

spk_1:   12:18
well, that's a timely reminder for all our listeners, perhaps

spk_0:   12:21
very much so, yes, on then we got lucky, as at the very moment we were investigating, his wife's sister decided to come and visit from Riga. And if Mrs Mulally was a profligate poster, she was nothing compared to her sister, who charted her course from Riga to Brussels in just the most fine detail.

spk_1:   12:44
Now that's handy

spk_0:   12:46
Yes, it wass. And then we had a second bit of luck as Ali, who, by the way, is now called Nick had registered his dental surgery on a Belgian database, which gave us an address.

spk_1:   12:59
Now I've seen these photographs grown where you were able to take a number of Mrs Mulally's social media posts and compared them to Google Street views of the area around the dental surgery. And they matched, precisely, didn't they?

spk_0:   13:12
They did it wass very rewarding moment when that happens.

spk_1:   13:17
And you even managed to track down the Iranian restaurant in Brussels, where they went for dinner.

spk_0:   13:21
Yeah, unbelievably, we managed to find a photograph of the exact same table that Mrs Mulally and her sister posted on Facebook

spk_1:   13:31
and very distinctive wallpaper I seem to remember on. Then I called into the article. Jane hopped onto the Eurostar to Brussels one Sunday morning and interviewed him on his doorstep.

spk_0:   13:44
Yes, she did. She pulled something of a master stroke, actually, by getting a small parcel deliver tone beforehand, which had to be signed for.

spk_1:   13:52
And let's be honest, you have lots of examples of his signature.

spk_0:   13:55
About 20,000. Yeah, on DH, it matched.

spk_1:   14:01
Yeah, a great moment,

spk_0:   14:02
Yes, but I'm going to be honest. It was tempered by the fact that we now knew Mr Mulally his age. His wife's maiden name is kids names where they went to school with his father's name. We knew his place of work. It's Father's place of work and a whole lot more. Besides, so it's just extraordinary what you can find out about people simply from the clues they leave all over the Internet

spk_1:   14:26
on DH, something we might profitably all reflect on. Um, and it's a storey that even Mr Mulally himself found unbelievable. I understand. I mean, apparently told Jane that she must be from M I five or the Secret Service is there was no way she could have found him otherwise. He refused to believe she was just a reporter.

spk_0:   14:47
Yeah, that's right. It took us several minutes to convince him otherwise.

spk_1:   14:51
So for all this Well, what's your view of Mr Moon?

spk_0:   14:55
Do you know? I think overall list. He is at the very bottom of the food chain. He clearly hasn't made much money. And he didn't come across as a criminal, really in any way. I think he rather foolishly allowed himself to be drawn into a criminal organisation without fully realising what he was doing on DH. Honestly, not very much money.

spk_1:   15:16
Well, either that or has he explained at one point to Jane on his doorstep. Someone stole his identity and signed all those accounts with a forgery of his signature.

spk_0:   15:25
Exactly. And if it wa, it was a really good one.

spk_1:   15:29
Mmm. Is there a broader conversation that we need to have about the implications of all this?

spk_0:   15:34
I think there are a number of strands that see Ray, what would be your top pick?

spk_1:   15:40
I think you would have to be the way people tend to use companies house or indeed, any other accessible corporate registry. If the view is that it's own companies house, so it must be OK, then that's a misguided fio. The incidents of duplicate or for a near duplicate accounts across such a huge variety of entities, without any sense that anyone had noticed, really brings home how much you need to treat the information filed a company's house precaution

spk_0:   16:09
exactly, and also that there's a great deal of useful information there, which is not directly searchable for like accounting entries as it's not a specific data field searching for Olly Moo Lay or Sabine bows or a whole number of others, I will gild virtually no results. And yet, cos on whose behalf they have signed our tragically endemic to a huge number of suspicious activities globally.

spk_1:   16:34
We also did that piece a few months back. Graham, on the ubiquity of certain name elements and addresses, didn't weigh

spk_0:   16:39
we Ted, do you want to explain?

spk_1:   16:43
Yeah, we noticed preponderance of certain elements in the names of LP is being used in laundromats, for example, Berg, Lux, Star and Mark. So I designed a spreadsheet that would produce a list of all the different permutations of the most common elements. And then we cheque companies house to see if any entity was listed with that name.

spk_0:   17:08
And just remind me how many we found, Ray.

spk_1:   17:12
367

spk_0:   17:15
367 on this was solely through generating manes by using an algorithm. Nothing else,

spk_1:   17:22
huh? Yep. That's right.

spk_0:   17:23
On DH. How many of these randomly generated entities had accounts signed by Alan Mulally Ray

spk_1:   17:30
at 69

spk_0:   17:31
69. So 20% of this entire population had accounts signed by the same person.

spk_1:   17:38
It's worse than that grown because Scottish limited partnerships don't have to file accounts. It's only the LPs that have to.

spk_0:   17:45
So how many of the 367 were LPs? Ray

spk_1:   17:50
155.

spk_0:   17:53
So that means that nearly 45% of those required to find accounts were signed by at the moon. Yep, WeII. We also found some common addresses. Didn't weigh

spk_1:   18:05
yes. Again, the rules are different, for a little putt is compared to SL PS. But for a little putt is looking at the addresses, which are associated with Mr Mulally. We found a total of 77 entities registered to those addresses, which is almost exactly half. The reason for the discrepancy is that sometimes they weren't around long enough to sign accounts, and occasionally it was one of the other Latvians, like Stan or Eric who did So

spk_0:   18:33
I know this is not necessarily the easiest concept put across in a podcast, but just a summer highs, starting with the holy artificial thesis that a small number of words, when combined together, would make the names of companies used in laundromats. We found a total of 367 companies, 155 of which were LPs and half of those were in one way or another associated with Ali Move.

spk_1:   19:02
Yes, on. Basically, what we were doing was inventing new words and new names randomly. So actually we might have expected one or two hits, but not 367. But just to be clear, we don't think he was in any way the ringleader or organiser of this activity, just one of a number of people who have been encouraged to lend their name to the enterprise.

spk_0:   19:29
Correct. But what it does show is that there is, without a doubt a highly organised network which is producing entities which go on to be used in criminal activities. Although we cannot say and we're not necessarily alleging that those who create the entities are knowingly involved in any criminal activity themselves.

spk_1:   19:49
No. But I think we can point out that given the ubiquity of Alan Mulally signature on the same designated members, they're still offering some sort of ongoing services, which means that they're not very careful in checking the figures supplied to them for their annual accounts. Filings given their remarkable consistency across a massive number of completely different companies.

spk_0:   20:13
Yes, which, which brings us back to October 2017 and my article.

spk_1:   20:19
Yes, you also sent me the task of finding a set of accounts signed by Alan Mulally after October 2017 for a U. K L. L P, which he previously signed for

spk_0:   20:31
on. Did you?

spk_1:   20:32
No. Every single one I found now bore the signature of someone called Kang Dong Hee or a variant

spk_0:   20:42
extraordinary. I somehow suspect that isn't a coincidence.

spk_1:   20:48
Neither do I. I think when their man's identity was blown, they switch to another one.

spk_0:   20:54
Yes, so So that is the storey of Alan Mulally.

spk_1:   20:59
And it's quite a storey. What's on the menu for next week, right?

spk_0:   21:04
Well, Ray, I thought, given we keep mentioning them all the time, we might talk about why UK companies in particular are so attractive to these money laundering schemes and how they interact with other countries to make detection so very difficult. As it happens, that's well, the timeline is Pace, which is the parliamentary assembly for the Council of Europe, has just literally yesterday recommended a European wide approach to investigating and bringing to justice the perpetrators of these laundromats.

spk_1:   21:34
Oh, looking forward,

spk_0:   21:35
Teo, Thank you for listening to soothe future episodes. Fully subscribe through iTunes, Spotify or your normal cars provided thanks.