Nearly twice the amount stolen by the Brink’s-Mat robbers, totaling £26 million, has been confiscated from a company associated with the robbery over 40 years later.
The offshore entity belonged to Geoffrey Greenlees, a former British solicitor’s clerk wanted in connection with the 1983 gold bullion heist at Heathrow airport. Despite being accused of banking £4.1 million from the crime in Dubai and evading capture by relocating to Manila, where he led the Philippine Lawn Bowls Association, Greenlees passed away at the age of 84 without facing justice.
Greenlees was suspected of aiding in laundering the gold from the Brink’s-Mat robbery, with ties to the portion handled by M25 killer Kenneth Noye. Dutch financial publication Het Financieele Dagblad recently disclosed that Greenlees was identified as the beneficial owner of MCL Netherlands, a company established in 1981 with investments in various Australian businesses, mainly within the food sector.
The house bank ING, where MCL had deposited over £60 million, initiated inquiries into Greenlees’s background in 2015. Subsequently, Dutch authorities froze the accounts in early 2017 on suspicion of money laundering. MCL was later fined £60 million in 2024, with a significant portion allocated to Australian tax authorities and the remainder to the Dutch Treasury.
Although initial investigations linked the Brink’s-Mat robbery to the case, prosecutors could not confirm the origin of the seized funds due to “money laundering without an underlying offense.” Greenlees’s involvement in a network of shell companies spanning Curaçao, Australia, and the Cayman Islands further complicated the money trail.
Moreover, Greenlees’s connections to other shell companies were exposed in the Panama Papers in 2016. His association with the Brink’s-Mat gang through Jean Savage was highlighted during legal proceedings, shedding light on the intricate web of financial transactions involving illicit proceeds.
The saga surrounding the Brink’s-Mat robbery continues to intrigue, with ongoing efforts to trace the dispersed gold and hold accountable those involved in the historic heist.
