How a polo-loving businessman was a secret global drug lord

On the surface, Mohamed Asif Havez was an erect individual.

A global businessman and ambassador at Polo Club in the Percent of London, rubbing the shoulders of the British elite, including members of the royal family.

He also regularly conveyed detailed information to the authorities in the United Kingdom and the Middle East, in some cases, which led to huge shipments of drugs. He said he was enthusiastic about what he saw was “his moral commitment to limit and highlighting criminal activities.”

At least, this was what people would have thought.

In fact, Hafiz himself was what American officials described as “one of the most abundant drug dealers in the world.”

From his residence in the United Kingdom, it was the doll engine of the vast drug empire, with many tons of heroin, metamafitamine and hashish from bases in Pakistan and India that were distributed all over the world. The gangs that his competitors told – and his motives was to rid its competitors’ market.

His position in the underworld won the title of “Sultan”.

But this criminal and prestigious authority will not continue forever. After a complicated joint operation between the British and MEPRIA, Haviz, 66, was handed over from the United Kingdom in 2023. He admitted that he was guilty last November.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison in New York Prison on charges of conspiracy to import drugs – including enough heroin for “millions of doses” – to the United States. After his detention since 2017, the Hafeez penalty will end in 2033.

The British Broadcasting Corporation has closely followed Hafiz’s case. We have collected information from court documents, companies ’lists and interviews with the people who know it.

We wanted to discover how he managed to stay under the radar for a long time – and how he was finally arrested.

Havez was born in September 1958 for a middle -class family in Lahore, Pakistan. One of the six children, his upbringing was comfortable. He told the people in Lahore who knew the BBC family that his father had a factory near the city. Haviz later told a US court that he was trained as a commercial pilot.

From the early nineties to about mid -2010, it has managed a virtual legitimate umbrella named Sarwani International Corporation, with sub -companies in Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

According to its website – which has since been closed – has sold technical equipment for armies, governments and police forces worldwide, including drug detection equipment.

Among the other companies under the umbrella of Sarwani was a woven company registered in various countries, and an Italian restaurant in Lahore was a concession for a well -known brand Knightsbridge, and a company called Windsor -based Windsor to London, which specialized in “Polo Services and Equestropian”.

Not only did these companies provide him with a luxurious pattern, but also guaranteed access to the most exclusive circles in the United Kingdom. He was listed as an international ambassador to the prestigious Ham Polo Club Club for at least three years, from 2009 to 2011.

Ham Polo Club The BBC told Hafeez that he was never a member of the club, that the club no longer had “ambassadors”, and that the current council “has nothing to do with it.” He added that the event in which Haviz and his wife were filmed for the princes “was run by a third party.”

The various international arms were dissolved in different stages in 2010, according to their lists in the equivalent of the internationally equivalent companies and records.

A former Sarwani employee in the United Arab Emirates told the BBC that he was suspected of “suspected” something that is going on “when he was working at work, because even large projects” were paid only in cash. ” The employee – who asked not to get to know him for fear of revenge – said that he finally left the work because he was uncomfortable with this.

“There was no [bank] Transactions, no records, no existence. ”He told the BBC.

Hafeez periodically writes messages to the authorities in the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom to inform the competing cartals, under the guise of being an interested member of the public.

BBC, as well as the messages he received in response to the British embassy in Dubai and the UK’s home office, thanked and thanked him and expressing his appreciation to contact him.

The BBC has told the BBC that it does not comment on individual correspondence.

The Foreign, Commonwealth, Development Office and Dubai Government were contacted by the BBC for comment, but it did not respond.

The Hafeez family shared these messages with the BBC in 2018, while he was involved in a long legal battle against delivery to the United States.

They also submitted them to the courts in the United Kingdom, and then, to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), as evidence that he was a laboratory and needed protection. All the courts differed and ruled that this was a trick by Havis to rid the competitors market.

“A person caught the attention of the authorities to the criminal authorities of others who knew it was actual or potential competitors for his great criminal institution,” said Hafeez, Echr.

While Hafiz was writing these messages, a meeting was held in 2014 – despite his absence – would lead to his fall.

Two of Hafeez partners who are close to the potential buyer of Colombia met in an apartment in Mombasa, Kenya. They burned a small amount of heroin in order to clarify its pure extent, and they said they could provide it with any amount of “100 % … white crystal”.

The supplier of this high -quality heroin, who told Jupiter, was a man from Pakistan known as the “Sultan” – that is, Hafiz.

What they will soon learn is that the “buyer” of Colombia was actually working secretly to the United States Control Administration (DeA). The entire meeting was part of a detailed bite, and was secretly filmed – footage obtained by the BBC.

The US Court documents reveal that the deal was coordinated by Baktash and IBRAHIM Akasha, two brothers who led a violent cartel in Kenya. Their father himself was a fearful king who was killed in the red light area of ​​Amsterdam in 2000.

The deal also included Vegiri “Vicky” Josouami, an Indian citizen who runs Aquas.

In October 2014, with Akashas, ​​Goswami and Hafeez still unaware for those who were already buyers, 99 kg of heroin and 2 kg of Christian methyl to fake Colombian trapper. Aquasas promised to provide hundreds of kilograms more than each drug.

A month later, Akasha and Josouami’s brothers were arrested in Mombasa. They were released shortly after that, and they spent more than two years fighting delivery to the United States.

In the background, the American law perpetrator worked with their counterparts in the United Kingdom to collect their case against Hafiz, using the evidence collected from the devices they seized when they arrested Josouami and the Akasha brothers. On these, they found multiple references to Hafeez as a major resource, and they were able to find sufficient evidence to get to know him as “the Sultan.”

One of the men, Josouami, did not stop the United States, from continuing his illegal project. In 2015, while it was on bail in Kenya, he developed a plan with Havez to transfer several tons of a drug called Evedrane from a chemical factory in Solabur, India, to Mozambique.

Ephedrine is used, which is a strong legal drug in limited quantities, to make methamphetamine. The two men – Josouami and Haviz – plans to create the Met Factory in the capital of Mozambique, Mapoto, and the American Court documents. However, their plan was abandoned in 2016, when the police raided the Solabur Factory and seized 18 tons of epiderine.

The brothers Akasha and Goswami finally took a trip to the United States to face the trial in January 2017.

Hafiz was arrested eight months later in London, in his apartment in the Saint John Wood neighborhood. He was detained in Belmarsh Security Prison in southeast London, and from there he spent six years fighting delivery to the United States.

A major development occurred in 2019 in the United States. Josouami acknowledged that he was guilty, and told the New York Court that he had agreed to cooperate with the public prosecutors. Okasha’s brothers also admitted that he was guilty.

Baktash Akasha was sentenced to 25 years in prison. His brother Ibrahim was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Josouami, who had not yet been sentenced, had witnessed against Havez in the United States in the case, had gone to trial.

From Belmarsh, Hafeez was running out of options.

He tried to stop handing over to the United States – but he failed to persuade the judges, the Supreme Court in London and the European Union Agency, which was in fact an informant of the authorities that were “the risk of abuse from his prisoners’ colleagues” as a result.

He also claimed that the conditions in the American prison would be “inhuman and degrading” for him because of his health conditions, including type 2 diabetes and asthma.

It lost all these arguments at every stage and was delivered in May 2023.

His case did not go to trial. In November of last year, Havez admitted that he was guilty of two accusations of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute heroin, metamafitamine and hamashish and import them to the United States.

Before childbirth, the general prosecutors described the “very fortunate conditions” of Havez’s life, which “aims to his harsh decision in the scheme … and benefit from the distribution of dangerous materials that destroy life and entire societies.”

“Unlike many travelers who bear the activities of drugs, at least, at least, of despair, poverty and lack of educational opportunities,” The defendant has lived a life full of distinction and choice. “