City fraud pair face jail terms

Two men who stole nearly half a million pounds in a simple fraud from an international City bank and laundered the money through London casinos face being given lengthy jail sentences today.

Martin Farquhar, 29, a clerk with the International Bank of Japan, used a colleague's password to transfer two major sums of cash from the bank to an associate with a Halifax building society account.

After Farquhar transferred the money - around £420,000 - he resigned from the bank and disappeared to start a new life in Ireland. When the bank realised the loss they called in the police, and detectives from the City of London fraud squad tracked the clerk to Dublin.

In the meantime his associate, Rafiq Petkar, 41, a self-employed financier, was arrested at his home in Acton. Police found that the pair had laundered a lot of the cash through London casinos.

Some of the money had been transferred to offshore trusts in Bermuda but two thirds of it is still missing. The two men are due to be sentenced at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court today.