Drugs for Gucci and Money for Free

Last August, at the wedding of a friend, I sat down next to a chap who had recently been handed one million pounds in a duffel bag. At the races earlier that summer, a very wealthy associate of the chap’s had asked him to place a gargantuan bet on a rank outsider, just for the hell of it — and the horse had won. Returning to the white-faced tote moments later, my new pal learned that the bookie couldn’t possibly pay him right away (and indeed that the loss might clear him out for the entire season), but that there might just be a way through — if only he could remunerate him solely in cash later that week. And so, sitting in the lobby of a Mayfair hotel the following Wednesday, the chap was presented with a groaning North Face full of bank notes by a man who refused to take his sunglasses off — and soon learned the obvious origin of the cash. “County lines,” Mr Rayban said. “Money laundering”.