They made for an unlikely alliance. One was the playboy son of a clothing tycoon who counted members of the Pakistani government among his close relatives.
Another was a gold-toothed gangster from Bradford, while the third was a cage-fighting hardman who lived in a £1m house. But together they formed one of the biggest gun-running operations ever uncovered in Britain.
Kaleem Akhtar, Mudassar Ali and Paul Wilson teamed up to become the gun-runners of choice for the North's gangs and major criminals.
Their illicit network flooded the north with dozens, if not hundreds, of firearms smuggled into the country from Lithuania. Read more: Gennaro 'The Don' Panzuto: Italian mafia's Manchester connection fled 'Camorra' gang war in Naples Read more: Aki: The brutal rise and bloody fall of gangland's 'King of the Hill' Such was the spread of their network it led to a spike in reports of gun crime.
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