The assets to be recovered include two Allosaurus skeletons and a Stegosaurus skeleton acquired at auction for £12.4 million (NZ$29 million) in December 2024. Photo: SEBASTIAN GOLLNOW
UK officials will seize dinosaur fossils, luxury flats and expensive artworks worth millions from a Chinese businessman linked to a major money laundering scandal, British police say.
Binghai Su, 37, who lives in the UK, was linked to Singapore's largest-ever money laundering case from 2023 to 2024, the National Crime Agency (NCA) said.
Su was never charged in the Singapore investigation in which more than US$2 billion (NZ$3.5 billion) in criminal assets were recovered in simultaneous raids in August 2023.
On Wednesday the NCA reached a civil settlement with Su, 37, and his company Su Empire Limited to recover millions of pounds of assets that were "deemed to represent the proceeds of crime".
The settlement came after Su declined to respond to a court order in April this year to explain the source of his UK assets.
The assets to be recovered include two Allosaurus skeletons - a mother and juvenile pair - and a Stegosaurus skeleton acquired at auction for £12.4 million (NZ$29 million) in December 2024.
Officials will also seize nine apartments in central London's Westminster district, bought for £15.7 million (NZ$36.6 million) last year, and 11 Chinese artworks bought at auction for over £400,000 (NZ$934,000) in 2022.
"While the recovery of dinosaur fossils is unusual, they demonstrate the value of the Proceeds of Crime Act which allows us to recover suspected criminal assets, whatever form they take," the NCA's head of Asset Denial Rob Burgess said.
"The result is the same, be it cash, houses or dinosaur bones."
Under the settlement the NCA will keep 75 percent of the proceeds of the sales of the items. The rest will be returned to Su, since this is a "civil, not criminal" case, the NCA said.
"There has been no finding of guilt to base the claim on," an NCA spokesman told AFP.
"Therefore an agreement is negotiated between the two parties."
- AFP
