I was arrested by the HMRC (Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs). It was after three years since I started my research on UK financial crimes. Meeting these HMRC officers face to face while they were carrying out a real investigation was, indeed, a useful addition to my research.
I could have written this story from A to Z, but then I thought, why not talk about the day I got arrested? So here it is.
So how did it happen?
6.30 a.m. November 02, 2017.
I heard someone bashing on the main door. Someone shouted. They called my name. Seconds later, my landlady knocked on my door. There are some people looking for you, she said, we opened the door for them. Next, there were 6-10 HMRC officers inside my place. One of them read the arrest warrant. They were arresting me as part of an ongoing money laundering investigation.
The next step? They had to take me to a police station. I asked them for more time to get ready. They followed my every move. They inspected the bathroom before I used it. They were around me as I got dressed. During these 15-20 minutes, I had the chance to observe their behaviour.
My observations.
They treated me politely. They were professional in their duty. However, they had the power (given by the crown courts) to raid my place and arrest me. They were demonstrating the power they received. They behaved based on the level of their experience and capacity. I cooperated with them the best possible way I could.
Among the 6-10 officers in the pack, my immediate attention went to the leader of the pack. Like they say, leaders shape and make others around them. By observing him, I thought, it would help me understand what his line managers perceived about the case. The leader was on a call with someone else, perhaps his line manager, through a mobile device.
He seemed excited. Great! But something wasn’t right with him in the context of “been a seeker.” Excitement is a mental activity; its expressions, however, are visible through the body. He was projecting, not observing the scene. Soon, I felt that his excitement had a negative impact on his awareness. When a person gets excited without being aware of the surroundings or the world around them, they tend to misinterpret things. They make irrational decisions.
His sense of wonder and excitement, I felt, was coming out of this imbalanced combination of his ego, intellect, and experience. 15 minutes is a small time to come to conclusions. But my observations definitely raised concerns about the whole team. Do they all (including his supervisors) share the same mental mechanism? If so, this may change the DNA of the evidence of this investigation. It could subsequently lead to another level of identification. Sure, getting excited is not a big deal but if my assumptions were correct, losing awareness in a case like this is a crime. Why? you may ask! It can cost many people their time, energy, and money. Although they didn’t really know what I had been doing, I knew exactly what I had been doing. I knew what they could find in my place. So I was curious; what made them allocate resources to raid my place and arrest me? Surely, things didn’t make much sense.
The money laundering hub of the world.
With the data I gathered through my research, I knew that the UK was the money laundering hub of the world. In the UK, as I perceive it, financial crimes are the king of all crimes. Money laundering is the heart of the criminal ecosystem. It’s a highly rewarding task. According to the National Crime Agency (NCA), "Money laundering costs the UK more than £100 billion a year.” So I was curious. Curious to know what led prosecutors to use their limited resources to this extent while they had a huge battle to fight with. I was a phone call away from them, but now, I wanted to know what pain-point I pinched in one of the most powerful regulatory mechanisms in the world.
It was interesting to observe these officials. For a minute I felt like I was a super-rich scumbag who had millions of assets, hefty fixed deposits and cold hard cash in my pockets. A rented double bedroom and my very humble lifestyle, I hoped, didn’t disappoint them. They had little knowledge about who I was, what I did and what my motives were. I only saw a team of talented people who were chasing whatever possible ways to support their projections. While they did that, they missed out on the biggest asset that they should have paid more attention to. Me. Myself. Their capture.
First time in a prison cell.
6.45am. It was my time to leave the house. I left home with three officers. They were polite. Others remained at my place to carry out the search. Later I found out that they carried out the investigation for another six hours.
They took me to a police station. After the proceedings, they put me in a cell. They gave me a blanket. I spent about three hours in the cell. Nine years ago, I came to the UK as a student. I worked my face off to know what I want to know and where I want to get in life. Now what? I’m in a prison cell!!! I knew what HMRC brought against me was some serious criminal allegations. So it was my time to figure out what the f*** just happened! But nothing came to my mind; Inside the cell, I spent my time singing some of my favourite songs until a policeman opened the cell. “Your lawyer is here,” he told me.
Me and my lawyer were interviewed by HMRC. They informed the police to release me. I came back home the same day. I was released on bail for the next 30 days.
What happens after you are arrested?
From the police station, I came back to my very average double bedroom. I felt devastated; my heart pounded faster. Muscles tightened. I felt ashamed. I felt isolated. These authorities were powerful enough to rip me into pieces emotionally. The investigation process created a significant level of insecurity around my career and my life in general.
Within the first month from the arrest, my mental state deteriorated. I had a criminal conviction; I lost my reputation; I was mentally unstable. I couldn’t take a break because all my start-ups wanted constant cash supply. I hardly slept more than a couple of hours at a stretch. I overthought to the point that it made me sick. My mind bore no capacity to serve these duties. Well, I had everything on my plate to say I am done.
Defending myself from one of the most powerful authorities in the world was a little too much for me. I had to freeze my work until the authorities finished their work. My plans focused on the financial industry, therefore, I could do nothing while having an ongoing criminal investigation. All I wanted to understand was how long they were going to take to find the truth so I could move on. I was looking forward to the next meeting with HMRC. It was at the end of my 30-day bail. It was the longest and the hardest 30 days of my life. I only had a few people close to me in the UK. I couldn’t face them. I knew how genuine they were. I knew their perception of criminals, or — even those accused. I couldn’t tell my parents what had happened; they would be terrified. I couldn’t tell this to my staff; it might demotivate them. There was no way my girlfriend was going to listen to my stories and goals and dreams anymore.
After the second meeting with the HMRC investigators (based on their questions), I realised that this investigation was going to take a long time. Their questions were all over the place. They were accusing me of money laundering, but their understanding about money laundering was pretty irrelevant to this specific case.
When they accused me of money laundering, the only asset I had was time, but they were going to waste so much of it. My time. With the emotional intelligence I had, I came to some reliable conclusions regarding the nature of this specific investigation. I was confused about HMRC’s motive behind it. Their questions weren’t designed to find the truthfulness of the case. Rather, their questions were constructed to determine what they wanted to project. [So when they don’t trust me and I don’t trust them, we need a mediator. In this specific case, I call them solicitors.]
Overcoming the situation
To many people, I was not the same person anymore. People now identified me as a criminal. Earlier, to them, I was a hard working entrepreneur. With a criminal reference under my name, I could only see myself becoming a criminal. But then, I will have to stop everything I had been dreaming. I’d have to let go of the values I had.
Instead of becoming a criminal, I thought, I’d stick to the same game plan. I always trusted the human brain, to which I fed relevant information since I was a teenager. So it was the time for my brain to perform. As a result, I started reading. I wrote. I exercised regularly to burn out the negativity. I developed my interest in epigenetics.
It took me three months to settle my distressed mind. I finally figured out how to deal with prosecutors by staying one step ahead of them. What was my strategy? Forgetting their existence.
Before this saga took over, I had plans to set up a financial brokerage and develop my own system to address certain issues in the market by 2019. But suddenly, after all this, applying for an FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) licence was not an option anymore. So I started everything all over again. I remapped all my plans in the UK. I was genuine and honest to everyone as I always have been. No one questioned my genuineness, talent or the capacity based on the investigation carried out by the HMRC. Throughout my career, I, myself, was always evaluated by my results and performance. It worked for me this time as well.
Throughout my life, I was a dreamer, who was always loyal to the dream of who I wanted to be. I was loyal to my responsibilities. As a reason, my brain did its job.
So here’s something I can assure you: as long as you are loyal to yourself and your beliefs and you deliver your responsibilities, you can forget the problems which you can’t find answers to, so you can move on. Your best friend is your brain. You have to let it perform. So I did just exactly that. I stayed loyal to my dreams. I performed my duties. I let my brain perform.
What followed later was the best three years of my life.
I feel healthier, happier, and wealthier today. I feel positive about my career and my knowledge related to it. Getting arrested gave me a chance to think about economics and life from a different perspective.
Since then, I had been working on several conceptual business designs. Their commercial value has tremendously increased. I have established my business portfolio in these major industries: finance; energy; education. They are running consciously, joyfully and productively. I have developed significant attention to emotional intelligence. Before I was arrested, I was interested to know how people thought. Now, I’m interested to know why and what they think. That’s how my interest between economics and epigenetics developed. A topic for another day.
An update on the investigation:
It has been 34 months since my arrest and prosecutors are still carrying out their investigation. I am curious, as always, and waiting to find out what exactly made them invest their time and resources in this case. Is it because I have really committed a crime? Is it because I have done something that prosecutors misinterpret as a crime? Is it because someone had complained about me just because they thought I was a weirdo or that their jealousy was aroused? Answers are yet to come.
My research about criminals, though, never stopped. it’s hard to keep my eyes off them; they are everywhere.
Next week onwards, I share the findings of my research samples.
Thanks for your time.
Hasitha Rodrigo
Comments