A Chinese citizen wanted for running illegal casinos spent tens of millions of pounds buying 85 luxury properties in London.
Su Jiangbo splashed out at least £81 million, including £11.5 million on seven flats in one day. Another two flats worth £2 million were bought the following day, an investigation by The Sunday Times and the Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) found.
Despite being wanted in China, where he was described as a “fugitive criminal suspect”, Su bought more properties over a period of days, including 15 flats in a luxury development near the Tate Modern art gallery.
Last week, it was announced that an unnamed Chinese citizen had an unexplained wealth order and interim freezing order issued against him by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) for 85 properties. The Sunday Times and OCCRP were able to identify him as Su and find the addresses of 57 of the properties he bought.
Unexplained wealth orders, colloquially known as “McMafia orders” after the TV series, came into force in 2018 with the aim of ending London’s role as a “laundromat” for criminal money. Less than a dozen investigations have taken place since, and £478 million worth of assets have been recovered.
In September 2023 Su featured on an arrest warrant list published by a court in China’s southeast Fujian province.
Land Registry records show he began his spending spree three months earlier in July 2023.
The 15 flats he bought were at Triptych Bankside, a development of 169 homes built by JTRE London near the Tate Modern art gallery. A JTRE spokesman said the company “complied with all applicable legal and regulatory requirements”.
Triptych BanksideAlamy
The flats were worth almost £20 million. Half of that sum was used to buy an 18th-floor penthouse.
In January 2024, after his arrest warrant was issued, he bought 14 flats worth more than £13 million at another apartment complex, Taylor Wimpey’s Postmark, in Islington, north London. Taylor Wimpey declined to comment in detail but a spokesman said the company “takes compliance with our legal and regulatory obligations extremely seriously, with sanctions and anti-money laundering controls in place”.
A £657,000 flat in the Kings Tower, Chelsea, a 31-storey tower built by the Berkeley Group, followed, and then 19 flats worth a total of £14 million in the high-rise Park & Sayer (also known as Hawksbury Heights) in Southwark, built by Lendlease.
The Kings Tower, Chelsea
Postmark in Islington, north London
Lendlease said it had anti-money laundering policies and procedures and conducted customer due diligence checks. Mills and Reeve, the solicitors who acted for Lendlease, declined to comment. A spokesman for the Berkeley Group said it complied with all anti-money laundering regulations.
Su also bought seven properties worth a total of £12.4 million in Galliard Homes’ new-build TCRW SOHO near Tottenham Court Road in central London. Galliard declined to comment.
TCRW SOHO: outside and inside, below
Su has not been charged with or convicted of any criminal activity in the UK. He is understood to be able to purchase the properties using passports other than his Chinese one. Holding a number of passports is legal, but is considered a high-risk factor for money laundering checks.
Companies House records show that Su holds a passport from St Kitts and Nevis, the tiny Caribbean nation that sells passports for about £200,000. They are favoured by wealthy Chinese because they give access to more than 150 countries without a visa. He is also a citizen of Cambodia.
“Golden passports” or passports purchased through citizen-by-investment schemes should prompt so-called “enhanced due diligence”. “Unusually complex or unusually large” transactions should also raise red flags, according to anti-money laundering regulations.
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Su used a string of UK companies for the purchases — Sky Arrow (UK), Sky Falcon (UK), Hollywood Ruby, Hollywood Emerald, Hollywood Gold, Hollywood Onyx, Hollywood Diamond, Hollywood Spinel, Hollywood Silver, Hollywood Opal, Hollywood Global Properties and Hollywood Titanium — of which he is the sole shareholder and beneficiary. He had listed Singapore as his country of residence on Companies House but this month he changed it to Malaysia.
The High Court issued the orders on Su’s properties on March 18, Land Registry documents show. Su will have three months to prove that the money used to buy the properties was lawfully obtained or could risk having them seized.
Alicia Kearns, Conservative MP and shadow minister for home affairs, said: “People hiding behind so-called ‘golden passports’ must not be allowed to launder money through our capital city. Honest, hardworking British citizens expect fairness, not to be outbid by millions of pounds earned illegally.”
Alicia KearnsCIRCE HAMILTON FOR THE TIMES
Kearns added: “The Conservatives introduced unexplained wealth orders to target and hunt down criminal money launderers and protect our markets. These powers must be used to their full extent — including the seizure of criminal assets.”
Su did not respond to requests for comment.