They made for an unlikely alliance. One was the playboy son of a clothing tycoon who counted members of the Pakistani government among his close relatives.
Another was a gold-toothed gangster from Bradford, while the third was a cage-fighting hardman who lived in a £1m house. But together they formed one of the biggest gun-running operations ever uncovered in Britain.
Kaleem Akhtar, Mudassar Ali and Paul Wilson teamed up to become the gun-runners of choice for the North’s gangs and major criminals. Their illicit network flooded the north with dozens, if not hundreds, of firearms smuggled into the country from Lithuania.
Such was the spread of their network it led to a spike in reports of gun crime. But their empire would come crashing down after specialist cops first tracked, then smashed the arms racket.
To the outside world Kaleem Akhtar was the epitome of south Manchester middle-class respectability. Born in Pakistan, he came to Britain at the age of three and his family set up a successful chain of clothing stores in Manchester and Liverpool.
Close relatives included a Pakistani MP and former minister in the Pakistani government. After dropping out of his A Level studies at Trafford College he joined the family business and seemed set to follow in his father’s footsteps.
An apparently dutiful husband, his arranged marriage was attended by 4,000 guests. He and his wife lived in a £350,000 semi on the borders of Chorlton and Whalley Range given as a wedding gift. But it was all a facade.
The self-styled ‘Big K’ wanted for nothing, but allowed himself to be seduced by the ‘bling and glamour’ of the underworld. Driving a top spec £50,000 Range Rover, he spent much of his time in nightclubs and kept two secret girlfriends, while living the life of a gangster.
It’s not known exactly how he became involved in gun-running but, driven by a ‘desire for street cred and glory’, somehow the ‘thrill seeking rich kid’ connected with career criminals Ali, a feared Bradford gangster, and Wilson, a drug dealer who lived in a £1m house in Southport, Merseyside.
They began smuggling Russian-made Baikal handguns from Lithuania into Essex. The weapons, blank-firing gas handguns which can be sold legally for about £100 in some countries, were stripped down, re-barrelled and converted to fire 9mm bullets, before being taken in batches to Manchester by the Lithuanian brothers Agnius and Edgaras Malcevas.
There pistols, handguns, silencers and bullets, were packaged into assassins kits and sold at £1,700 a time. Described as ‘ballistic bling’, they became a status symbol favoured by gangs across Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Bradford and Leeds.
A member of the Gooch gang was reportedly was caught in possession of one of Akhtar’s guns after being named as prime suspect in the unsolved murder of schoolboy Jesse James, 15, in September 2006. Weapons supplied by the gang were also said to have been used in a £90,000 armed robbery on a security van in which a guard was held at gunpoint and sprayed with petrol.
One gang member even bragged to criminals in Strangeways that Akhtar was responsible for supplying all the firearms in ‘Gunchester’. Evidence of Akhtar’s fascination with firearms was found in a trophy picture of the playboy with a gun stuffed down the front of his trousers and flanked by gun-toting pals, thought to have been taken in Pakistan.
But the gang’s arrogance was to be their undoing. Unbeknown to them, police had got wind of the operation and had them under surveillance.
Several clandestine weapon exchanges were recorded, including one in a car park in Rusholme and another in Green End Road, Burnage.
In the raids that followed, 56 guns and 856 bullets supplied by the gang were seized in Prestwich, Longsight, Moss Side, Denton, Blackley, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford and Scotland. It was one of the biggest ever gun-running networks ever uncovered by police.
The net was closing in, but Akhtar still drove past in the family Range Rover as police were searching the flat he and his pals used as a party-pad and ammunition store in Grandale Street, Rusholme.
In July 2007, armed officers stopped the Lithuanian brothers on the M62 as they drove to Manchester in their BMW. Inside the car they found guns, silencers and bullets in a sports bag.
Akhtar’s fingerprints were found on a drawstring bag containing a pistol, hidden under the passenger seat. Two months later, as Akhtar was finally arrested, police found £50,000, a bulletproof vest and an incriminating letter from an accomplice in prison.
Akhtar, Ali, Wilson, the Malcevas brothers and two others were charged with firearms offences. All except Akhtar pleaded guilty.
During a trial in July 2008 at Manchester Crown Court, Akhtar’s defence team said although he knew those involved in the gun-running he was not a part of it and that the only convictions he had were for driving family member’s cars while disqualified and giving his brother’s details when stopped by police.
The jury didn’t believe him. There were gasps from family members in the public gallery as, following a two week trial, the foreman read out the guilty verdict.
Akhtar, then 29, showed no emotion as he was jailed for 20 years for conspiracy to possess firearms and ammunition with intent to enable another to endanger life. Sending him down, Judge Clement Goldstone QC, said the gun-runner was attracted by the ‘glamour and notoriety’ of being a gangster.
“You were drawn to this conspiracy out of greed and a desire for street cred and glory,” he added. “You have not brought glory to your family, which is well respected here and in Pakistan; you have brought shame and disgrace.”
Ali, 30, from Great Horton Road in Bradford, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to the same charge. Wilson, 37, was jailed for 11 years and six months.
Akhtar’s family was left to rue his downfall. “Kaleem was brought up beautifully,” his uncle told reporters outside court.
“The family is well-off and has been reputable since we came to this country from Pakistan. He has never wanted for anything and after he left college he was given a shop to run.
“It must have been the thrill and the bad company that misled him.”