'Mr Bigs' keeping their illegal loot

Class A drug traffickers, tax fraudsters and cigarette smugglers are among 45 convicts who have been issued with confiscation orders of 1m or more.

They include two men, a money launderer and a cigarette smuggler, who were ordered by Yorkshire crown court judges to repay over 6.3m in total.

Amer Ramzan, 40, was told to repay more than 1.8m by a judge at Leeds Crown Court in 2007 after admitting conspiracy to launder drugs money.

The court heard that 97.5m passed through the banking system of Ramzan's Halifax travel agency business between August 1999 and his arrest in February 2001.

In 2007 a judge at Hull Crown Court ordered Laurence Myers, 61, from Manchester, to repay 4.4m after he pleaded guilty to three cigarette smuggling charges.

Documents found at Myers's home showed that he had been involved in the illegal trading of 32 million cigarettes.

Also on the list are Midlands crime bosses Craig Johnson and Asad Chohan, who were told to pay back more than 54m between them.

Johnson, 36, who lived in a stately home near Stone, Stafforshire, bought luxury cars, yachts and helicopters through a 138m mobile phone tax fraud.

He was jailed for 10-and-a-half years in 2006 and later ordered to repay more than 26m.

It took three trials to get to the bottom of Chohan's empire, which was involved in VAT fraud, money laundering and tobacco smuggling.

Chohan, 41, of Solihull, fled the country in 2006 but was convicted in his absence of dodging tax payments and jailed for five years. The criminal, who is thought to be in Pakistan, was later ordered to repay 28.6m at Birmingham Crown Court.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which published the list, refused to disclose how much each crook had repaid, if anything. It said that eight criminals had handed over the full amount, while eight had yet to repay a penny.

CPS figures reveal that criminals have been ordered to repay almost 174m since 2005 but only 29.1m has been successfully confiscated.

Legal experts estimate that almost 118m of the outstanding amount is hidden, with much of it overseas.

Almost 21m is tied up by receivers after the collapse of illicit business empires.

The CPS has also written off 1.4m because orders cannot be enforced while defendants are on the run.

In a further setback, the CPS said that even when assets are seized back from criminals, the organisation was struggling to sell them because of the weak economy.

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "Under this Government, seizing the proceeds of crime has been woefully inadequate. We end up spending more money on the teams supposed to be collecting the cash than they are actually recovering themselves, so the Mr Bigs just get away with it."