The mother, 42, had walked into the Cardiff visa office with the notes in her rucksack
A CHINESE national has been ordered to forfeit £41,720 in a civil case after walking into the Cardiff Home Office building with the cash in her rucksack.
Xuelian Xiang told the hearing at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court that she had entered the Home Office to apply to stay longer in the UK so her daughter could attend school in Wales.
She said she had done so following advice from the Red Cross. A short-stay holiday visa lasts for 90 days.
The cash was seized on site in June 2024, and the 42-year-old gave conflicting statements in her two subsequent Home Office interviews in August and October.
First she claimed the money had come from the sale of her house in China, which was in her mother’s name.
But when investigators found out that the sale had been agreed after she arrived in the UK, she instead said that her brother had lent her the money and that she had intended to pay him back when the house was sold.
Ms Xiang told the court that she hadn’t previously mentioned her brother because she didn’t want to get him in trouble.
Edward Conlan, representing the Home Office in the forfeiture application, accused Ms Xiang of being involved with “daigou” banking, an international money laundering system used in China. She denied this.
Daigou means “surrogate shopping” in Mandarin and entails using cash abroad to buy goods which are taken back to China and sold.
Surrogate shopping isn’t illegal but is known as a method for laundering money. Illicitly gained cash is sent abroad with “money mules” and the goods are traded for clean money back in China.
It was claimed that the Chinese national, who had an interpreter, had told investigators facts inconsistent with her visa application during the interviews.
She had stated for her visa application that she had only £10,000 in savings and intended to spend £5,300 on a short holiday to the UK.
But she then told investigators that she had intended on funding an education for her 11-year-old daughter in the UK. She had also told her travel agency that she had come to the UK to buy luxury goods, which is a practice associated with daigou banking.
Among the cash were two sealed wallets from London casinos Horizon Casino and Metropolitan Gambling dated from February and March of 2024 – both months before her arrival in the UK in June.
She claimed to have brought another wallet, from Eurochange, with her from China, but the company is based exclusively in the UK. She at first claimed that the handwriting on the wallet was hers, but later said she didn’t know whose it was.
Ms Xiang told the court that, without any money, she has been unable to return to China and has no fixed address. Information supplied to Cardiff Magistrates’ Court had her registered as living in Basingstoke.
Her brother claimed in a statement that he withdrew the money piecemeal from several banks and put the cash in the casino wallets because his English wasn’t proficient enough for him to know what they were.
But Mr Conlan challenged this saying: “You don’t have a brother, do you?”
Ms Xiang replied that she did and that he was born in 1986 and has two daughters.
Judge Charlotte Murphy told the court: “I find the statement of the brother – of whom I have no evidence exists – implausible that the wallets came into his possession.
“She failed to identify him in the first two interviews and I’m of the view that the writing [on the Eurochange wallet] is the respondent’s [Ms Xiang’s] and she changed her mind about who it was when she became aware the change could only have happened in the UK.
“She has knowledge of daigou banking. She has attempted to create false trails around this money and provided an unconvincing account.
“The respondent is most likely involved in daigou banking, and is, in the balance of probabilities, acting as a money mule.
“The cash is therefore recoverable property so it’s to be forfeited.”
Ms Xiang was also ordered to pay £2,093 to the Home Office to cover the costs of the case.
