00:00The worry of money laundering existing on our British high streets is a very real one.
00:05Mike Olley, a journalist for news website Midlands Grit, has been investigating this very subject.
00:12Surprisingly very common. If you live in a municipal area, I would estimate you're never more than a mile away from a business that's laundering money actively on a daily basis.
00:23I mean it used to be the cash rich businesses but nowadays things have moved on. The reality is that nowadays most drug deals are not done in cash, they're done surprisingly in credit card and debit cards just like you or I would buy anything in particular.
00:37Despite these concerns, authorities and industry specialists stress that the vast majority of high street businesses are completely legitimate.
00:46Put yourself in the position, if we were money laundering, would we want to be fitting an identikit picture that the media portrayed for us? No, I don't think so.
00:57They try and keep one step ahead. I think what we're hearing about in the media is a couple of steps behind in actual fact.
01:03Well, I hope my barber shop's not doing that. I would say generally not, no. There clearly are money laundering operations but you're not necessarily going to know about it just because they're a barber shop, just because they've got flashing lights or lots of water outside.
01:19No, they're not good indices. I think basically they don't cause anyone any problems really.
01:24Yes, they're part of an illegal drugs trade but they're not dens of violence. They're not discourse in neighbourhoods. You could argue they actually add a competitive edge.
01:35They brighten the high street up there, probably doing, in some respects, more good than they're doing harm.
01:42So I think that's why your local authorities, your police authorities, they're not really that concerned.
01:47And of course, they're not going to admit that. They'll huff and puff about it and roll out the party line, so to speak, but they're not any problem to anyone.
01:55Well, I got interested in drugs because I enjoyed narco films and stuff like that.
02:00I also worked with people who were really involved in the trade and they were telling me that it's just not like what we think it is.
02:06So I did some study into the matter and I've done a series of seven articles and it really is so different from what we believe it to be.
02:18It's quite a gentlemanly sport in many respects. Of course, yes, there are some very serious aspects to it, but day to day, it's a pretty straightforward part of our economy.
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