A 56-year-old vicar from Forest Gate in east London, who was jailed for four and a half years in April for conspiracy to facilitate unlawful immigration by conducting bogus marriages, has been told he must pay back £10,792 of his ill-gotten gains.
The vicar, Brian Shipsides, married approximately 250 Nigerian immigrants to EU nationals, mainly from Portugal and the Netherlands, at his All Saints Church between December 2007 and August 2010.
According to the Daily Mail, in one day alone, Shipsides conducted seven such marriages; formerly, the usual number of marriages in the parish was seven or eight per year.
Once married, the immigrants would tend to make applications to the Home Office for the right to remain in the country.
Judge Peter Grobel, in sentencing Shipsides at Inner London Crown Court, said: “Your important role in this conspiracy was a disgraceful abuse of your calling as an ordained minister of the church.
“Your criminal conduct appears to have been motivated as much by arrogance as by greed.”
The Mail reports that Shipsides had charged £140 per marriage, which netted him £30,000 in all. He worked with a Nigerian ‘fixer’, 32-year-old Amudalat Ladipo, who charged immigrants for her services in arranging pairings, and then paid the vicar his cut out of the proceeds.
Ladipo likewise was jailed in April.
At the time of the offences, the Church of England was not required to obtain certificates of approval from the Home Office ahead of marriages involving immigrants, and Shipsides exploited this loophole. The certificate of approval system was abolished in 2011, because it was found to be incompatible with Article 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights (prohibition of Discrimination).
At a Proceeds of Crime hearing at Inner London Crown Court yesterday, Shipsides was ordered to pay back some of the money he made illegally. If he does not comply with the confiscation order within the next six months, he faces a further six months imprisonment.
Under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, if it is proven that a criminal committed an acquisitive crime, then an accredited Financial Investigator can identify the value of any assets the criminal holds, such as bank accounts, houses or vehicles. These assets can then be used to pay back an amount, which is relevant to the estimated proceeds of their crime, even if the assets are legally held.
Any cash or assets recovered in this way can be made available to fund community projects or police operations that target criminality.
It does appear worrying that this abuse continued for such a period of time, and only a complicated and costly investigation by the UK Border Agency was able to put a stop to it; however, the recovery of the proceeds of crime can be seen as a positive step forward, by taking cash out of the pockets of criminals and using it to help the authorities fight crime.
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