Samir Jagirdar

Introduction

Samir Jagirdar is a Croydon businessman who used his London jewellery firm as a front to help launder £266 million of criminal cash, delivering it into one of the largest gold-based money laundering operations British police have ever dismantled. Jagirdar, 58, was jailed for seven years at Leeds Crown Court and banned from being a company director after pleading guilty to money laundering between 2012 and 2016.

Background Information

Jagirdar’s company, Pure Nines Ltd, was based in Hatton Garden — London’s historic jewellery quarter — and presented itself as a legitimate gold dealer. In reality, police said, it functioned as a collection point for dirty money: Jagirdar used the firm as a front to deliver cash to Fowler Oldfield, a Bradford gold business at the center of the scheme, where the money was used to buy gold grain that was exported to Dubai with fake invoices.

West Yorkshire Police described the Fowler Oldfield investigation as the largest into the laundering of criminal cash in UK legal history. Bank checks found the amount of cash flowing into the company’s accounts had increased from £11,000 in 2012 to more than £650,000 a year later — the arithmetic that eventually pulled in investigators.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Jailed for seven years over a £266 million laundering front. Jagirdar pleaded guilty to money laundering and was sentenced at Leeds Crown Court on Monday, October 12, 2026, alongside a directorship ban.

Police began investigating Fowler Oldfield in 2016 after a security company raised concerns about the huge daily increase in money being collected from the premises. In September 2016, officers searched Fowler Oldfield’s premises and two businesses in London, including Pure Nines Ltd in Hatton Garden, arresting 16 people and recovering cash and gold valued at more than £4 million.

What they found inside Pure Nines made the front unmistakable: an automated cash counting machine and bundles of cash in a safe, alongside 147 bars of fake gold which officers said were used “to give the appearance of the business being a legitimate gold dealer rather than a front for money laundering.” The fake inventory covered a real pipeline that moved £266 million of criminal cash into gold exports.

Public Reaction and Consequences

Jagirdar is the seventh defendant to be sentenced in connection with the fraud: four men were jailed in March 2025, and two others received custodial sentences in August 2026. His seven-year sentence and directorship ban put the Hatton Garden frontman’s name on a case list that has been building since the 2016 raids, and his guilty plea to laundering across 2012-2016 covered the scheme’s peak years.

The case’s scale — £266 million, the largest criminal-cash laundering investigation in UK legal history by the investigating force’s own description — made the sentencing chain a years-long public accounting of everyone who touched the cash. Jagirdar’s entry in that chain is the Pure Nines collection front and the fake gold bars that made it look legitimate.

Current Status

Jagirdar is serving a seven-year sentence imposed at Leeds Crown Court on October 12, 2026, after pleading guilty to money laundering between 2012 and 2016, and he is banned from being a company director. He is the seventh of the scheme’s defendants to be sentenced, with the earlier sentences dating from March 2025 and August 2026. Any confiscation proceedings were not reported in the coverage.

Impact on Their Career/Life

The Hatton Garden address that lent Pure Nines its credibility is now the case’s geography of shame, and Jagirdar’s directorship ban means the firm’s founder cannot legally run a company again. Seven years in prison follows the counting machines and fake bullion that police photographed in his own premises. For a man whose business depended on looking legitimate, the court record does the opposite: it documents, in the investigating force’s words, exactly how the appearance was manufactured.

Sources

• BBC News, “Hatton Garden company boss jailed over £266m money laundering scam,” October 13, 2026. source