As a pad -loving businessman was a secret global drug lord

On the surface of Muhammad Asif Hafis was a man.

The global businessman and the Ambassador of the prestigious London Polo Clauba, he rubbed his shoulders with the British elite, including a member of the royal family.

He also regularly provided detailed information to the UK authorities and the Middle East, which in some cases led to the interception of huge drug supplies. He was motivated, he said, just what he saw “moral obligation to stop and emphasize criminal activity.”

At least that’s exactly what he would think.

In reality, Hafis was the fact that American officials called “one of the most prolific drug dealers in the world.”

From his residence in the UK, he was a puppet of a huge empire, supplying many tons of heroin, methhetamine and hashish from the bases in Pakistan and India, which spread around the world. The gangs he informed about his opponents – and his motivation was to deprive the market of his competitors.

His status in the underground world was nicknamed Sultan.

But this criminal power and prestige would not last forever. After a complex joint operation between British and US authorities, Hafis, 66, was extradited from the UK in 2023. He pleaded guilty last November.

On Friday, he was sentenced to 16 years in a New York prison for drug involvement – including enough heroin for “millions of doses” in the United States. Having been in custody since 2017, Hafis’s verdict will end in 2033.

The BBC followed the Hafis case closely. We have collected information from court documents, corporate lists and interviews with the people who knew it.

We wanted to find out how he managed to stay under the radar for so long – and how he eventually got.

Hafis was born in September 1958 to a middle -class family in Lahora, Pakistan. One of the six children, his upbringing was convenient. People in Lahora who knew the family told the BBC that his father owned a factory near the city. Later, Hafis also stated in the US court that he had trained as a commercial pilot.

From the early 1990s, until about the mid-2010s, he led an external legal umbrella called Sarwani International Corporation, with a subsidiary in Pakistan, the UAE and the UK.

According to his web -sight – which has since been closed – he has been selling technical equipment to militants, government and police forces worldwide, including drug detection equipment.

Among other enterprises under the umbrella was a company of textiles registered in different countries, an Italian restaurant in Lahora, which was the franchise of the famous Knightsbridge brand, and a company named Tipmoor, based near West of London, which specialized in “Paul and Co -services”.

These companies not only provided him with a luxurious lifestyle, but also provided him with access to the most exclusive circles in the UK. It was listed as an international ambassador to the prestigious Ham Polo Club for at least three years, from 2009 to 2011. He and his wife Shakhin were also photographed in dealing with Prince William and received Prince Harry at the club in 2009.

Ham Polo Club told BBC that Hafeez was never a member of the club that the club no longer “ambassadors” and that the current council “has no connections”. It adds that the event on which Hafis and his wife were photographed, meeting with the princes, “ruled the third party.”

Different world weapons were dissolved at different stages of the 2010s, according to their lists of companies home and equivalent global registers.

Former Sarwani employee based in the UAE told the BBC that he suspected that “something fish” when he worked in business because even big projects were “paid for cash”. The employee – who asked him not to identify, fearing repression – said he eventually left the business because he felt uncomfortable with it.

“There was no (bank) transactions, no records, no existence,” he said to the BBC.

Hafis also periodically wrote letters to the authorities in the UAE and the UK, reporting competitive cartels, under the guise of being a concerned public representative.

The BBC saw them, as well as the letters he received from the British Embassy in Dubai and the UK ministry, thanked him and expressing his gratitude for coming in touch.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs told the BBC that it did not comment on individual correspondence.

The BBK appealed to the foreign, the Commonwealth and Development Bureau and the Dubai government, but did not respond.

Hafis family members shared these letters with the BBC in 2018, while it was involved in a long legal struggle against extradition in the United States.

They also sent them to court in the UK, and later to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) as proof that he was an informant and needed protection. All the courts disagreed and decided that Hafez was a record to deprive the market of competitors.

Hafis, according to Echr, was “a man who learned to the authorities of the criminal behavior of other people who, as he knew, are actual or potential competitors for his significant criminal enterprise.”

While Hafis wrote these letters, in 2014 a meeting took place, which – despite the fact that he was not there – would lead to his fall.

Two close Hafis associates met a potential buyer from Colombia in an apartment in Mobas, Kenya. They burned a small number of heroin to demonstrate how clean it is, and said they could provide it with any number of “100%… white crystals.”

The suppliers of this qualitative heroin, they told the buyer, was a man from Pakistan, known as “Sultan” – that is, Hafes.

What they quickly find out was that the “buyer” from Colombia actually worked under the cover for the US Drug Administration (DEA). The whole meeting was part of a complex jalat operation, and was lifted – the frames received by the BBC.

The US court documents show that the transaction was agreed by Baktash and Ibrahim Akashi, two brothers who headed a hard cartel in Kenya. Their father himself feared Kingpina, who was killed in the red light of Amsterdam in 2000.

The Viki Viki Viki, Indian National, also participated in the transactions, which directed the Akash operations.

In October 2014, with Akashi, Goswa and Hafes, they still did not know about who was actually buyers, 99 kg of heroin and 2 kg crystal meta, delivered by fake Colombian merchants. Akash promised to give hundreds of kilograms of more each drug.

A month later, the Akashi brothers were arrested in Mombas and Gosv. Shortly thereafter, they were released on bail and spent more than two years, fighting extradition in the United States.

In the background, US law enforcement officers worked with colleagues in the UK to make their business against Hafis, partly using the evidence collected from the devices they had seized when they were arrested by the gos and the Akashi brothers. They found a few links to Hafeez as the main supplier, and were able to find enough evidence to identify it as “Sultan”.

Faced with the US accusations, she did not stop one of the men to continue her illegal enterprise. In 2015, being subscribed to Kenya, he launched a plan with hafes for the transportation of several tons of drugs called ephedrine from the chemical factory in Solapur, India, Mozambique.

Ephedrine, a powerful medicine that is legal in limited quantities, is used to make methamphetamine. Two men – Goswes and Hafis – planned to create a factory method in the capital of Mozambique, mutation, in the documents of the US court. But their scheme was abandoned in 2016, when the police searched the Salapur plant and captured 18 tons of ephedrine.

The Akashi brothers and the gosa finally set up on the US flight to face the court in January 2017.

Hafis was arrested eight months later in London, in his apartment in the wealthy Senta -John neighborhood. He was detained in a high security prison in the southeast of London, and he spent six years from there, fighting extradition to the United States.

Great development took place in 2019 in the US. Goswa pleaded guilty and stated in New York court that he agreed to cooperate with the prosecutor’s office. Akashi’s brothers also pleaded guilty.

Akash Baktash was sentenced to 25 years in prison. His brother Ibrahim was sentenced to 23 years old.

Goswes, which should still be convicted, testified against Hafes in the United States if the case went to court.

From Bellasharsha Hafis lacked options.

He tried to stop the extradition in the US – but was unable to convince the magistrates, the Supreme Court in London and Echr that he was actually an informant of the authorities, who were “at risk of violent colleagues.”

He also claimed that the conditions in the US prison would be “inhuman and degrading” for his health, including type 2 diabetes and asthma.

He lost all these arguments at each stage and was extradited in May 2023.

His case did not go to court. Last November, Hafis found himself guilty of two articles for the production and distribution of heroin, methhetamine and hashish and import them in the United States.

The prosecutor’s office has previously supplied, the prosecutor’s office described the “extremely happy circumstances” of the life of the Hafis, who “throw the brutal relief of their decision on the scheme … and make a profit from the distribution of dangerous substances that destroy life and whole communities.”

“Unlike many traders of people whose drug activity is at least in part, from despair, poverty and lack of educational capabilities,” they said, “the defendant lived a life filled with privilege and choice.”