Father and son arrested at airport as international empire comes crashing down

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A father and son arrested at an airport as they were due to fly to Dubai face lengthy jail sentences for a series of drugs and firearms offences.

Asim Tufail, 52, and his son Junnaid Tufail, 23, were both exposed by the law enforcement infiltration of the EncroChat communications network.

Asim Tufail, who was wearing a £70,000 Rolex watch when he was held in the departure lounge in Terminal One in Manchester Airport, was said to ‘outwardly’ appear to be a ‘profitable businessman’ who enjoyed ‘the trappings of wealth’. “But the profits did not come from any kind of legitimate trade,” prosecutor Tim Storrie KC told Minshull Street Crown Court, reports the Manchester Evening News.“The business of Asim Tufail was criminal." Junnaid Tufail described his father as his ‘role model’, and followed his father into organised crime.“The business they ran, the business that lined their pockets, was that of organised crime," Mr Storrie told the court."Guns, drugs, money and threats of violence formed the basis of the business run by Asim Tufail, and on occasions, assisted by his son.”Prosecutors said that Asim Tufail was involved in an ‘international’ money laundering scheme, involving ‘vast’ sums.

The dad was also convicted of blackmail after allegedly threatening others to ‘secure their cooperation’.The pair were arrested at the departure lounge of the airport on January 18, 2021, as they waited to board a flight to Dubai.Mr Storrie also stated that an ‘extremely expensive collection of watches’ was seized during subsequent searches of their luggage and the family home on Kenmore Road.The pair were both ‘avid’ users of EncroChat, with Asim Tufail using the handle ‘Assassin New’ on the network, with his son known as ‘Baby Assassin’.