The four ringleaders jailed for the audacious Hatton Garden raid must pay back more than £6m between them or each serve another seven years in prison, a judge has ruled.
The burglars, who ransacked 73 safety deposit boxes after drilling a hole in the wall of an underground vault in London’s jewellery quarter three years ago, were ordered to pay back the money at a confiscation ruling at Woolwich crown court on Tuesday.
The men, career criminals who are all over 60 years of age, staged the raid on Hatton Garden Safe Deposit in 2015 over the Easter bank holiday weekend. If they fail to pay back the money it could mean that some of them, who are unwell, die in prison.
Judge Christopher Kinch QC said each jointly benefited from the £13.69m raid of cash, gold and precious stones. The confiscation orders were based on their “available assets” – the £6,447,079.50 that they are estimated to jointly still have derived directly or indirectly from the heist, plus extra sums dependent on their personal circumstances.
John “Kenny” Collins, 77, of Islington, north London, Daniel Jones, 63, of Enfield, north London, and Terry Perkins, 69, also of Enfield, are serving seven-year sentences, while Brian Reader, 78, of Dartford, Kent, is serving six years and three months.
Collins was ordered to pay £7,686,039 after the court heard he had assets in “liquid form” and property in this jurisdiction and abroad. Perkins was told he must pay £6,526,571 and Jones was ordered to pay £6,649,827.
Reader, who was not in court, was told he must pay back £6,644,951, including the sale of his £639,800 home and development land worth £533,000.
Although the total amount of the orders is £27.5m, in reality the four only have to repay the £6.45m between them, plus their individually assessed amounts. If either Collins, Jones, Perkins or Reader pay the total £6.45m it will be treated as a payment to each co-defendant’s confiscation order.
If the confiscation order money is paid in full, then nearly £12m will have been paid or restored, including about £3.6m of property that has already been seized and returned to victims of the burglary.
The judge said: “A number of these defendants are not only of a certain age, but have in some cases serious health problems.
“But, as a matter of principle and policy, it is very difficult to endorse any approach that there is particular treatment for someone who chooses to go out and commit offences at the advanced stage of their lives that some of these defendants were.”
Tom Wainwright, representing Reader, said his client’s sentence “does not have to be very long for it to mean, in reality, he will serve the rest of his life in custody”.
The gang used a diamond-tipped drill to bore a hole in the 50cm-thick concrete vault wall. Many of the losers from the heist were small independent jewellers, including those who were keeping stock for their retirement.
