Right now, a bingeable, addictive show is exactly what we all need to get through lockdown. And that’s what you’re about to get. Since pivoting to Time In, we’ve been bringing you the best things you can do from home – and one of those is watching the new Sky original, ‘Gangs of London’. All episodes of this action-packed drama will be available on Thursday April 23, but we’ve teamed up with Sky to bring you a whole lot of insider info before it drops. The show, while entirely fictional, is based on true events which happened in London and real people involved in money laundering and drug-smuggling. So, we thought we’d test your knowledge of corruption in the capital.
How much do you know about corruption in the capital?
High-level crime in London goes deeper than you might imagine. Test your knowledge by finding out whether these wild stories and mind-blowing statistics are true or false…
Experience gangland London like never before with the long-awaited Sky original, ‘Gangs of London’. All episodes of this visceral nine-part drama will be available on Sky on Thursday April 23. Head to our Time In page for our exclusive look at the characters, the episodes and behind-the-scenes stories.
Back to top
London is Europe’s most valuable
drug market
The National Crime Agency’s budget for last year was more than a billion pounds
£90 billion a year is laundered in London
80 percent of financial crimes in the UK go unreported
London’s cocaine market is
worth £1 billion
The prison population of the UK has nearly doubled in the last 30 years
‘Mr Big’ was one of the UK’s biggest drug dealers
A City trader stole more than £32 million from tycoons and celebrities using a Ponzi scheme
The cost of heroin in the UK is about 1000% times higher than its source price
One man stole more than $1 billion from a bank
A former MP stole half a billion pounds
True!
The Big Smoke is clearly smoking (among other things) way too much. Every major city in the world sees it’s share of drug use, but London is a different animal. Sky News reported that the capital consumes twice as much cocaine as any other European city. Every. Single. Day. But it’s not just London’s appetite that makes it such valuable turf: getting drugs in is hard, which means the markups are bonkers.
False!
The National Crime Agency, or NCA, actually had a budget of £448 million in 2015/2016. Still seems like a lot of crime-fighting dough, right? Well, not when you consider the budgets of its predecessors. When the NCA was born, it absorbed a bunch of other government agencies, the combined bankroll of which totalled £812m per year – and that was in 2013.
True!
According to a BBC report in 2017, money laundering is the biggest criminal scandal in the capital. Even so, £90 billion is a LOT of cash. To put it into perspective, The Shard is valued at about £2b, meaning you could buy 45 Shards with the money that’s laundered in London every year. That or 15 billion £6 pints, we know what we’d rather have.
False!
It’s actually closer to 90 percent. It’s hardly surprising that so many financial crimes occur in the capital when the risk of being reported is so low. It’s not just the finance industry that’s at risk either, according to experts, individuals, public services and even charities are all targets for fraud and other crimes. Stay vigilant, London.
True!
Some seriously smart people (with seriously strong stomachs) at King’s College London tested London’s waste water to find out just how much of the white powder Londoners are consuming. The results are shocking: an average of 23kg of cocaine is taken in London every day. That’s more than half a million doses every 24 hours. Time to kick the habit, London.
True!
Between 1993 and 2016 the number of prisoners in the UK rose from just over 44,000 to more than 85,000. What’s more, the average time spent in prison increased by nearly two years between 1999 and 2015. But does this mean there’s more crime? Not necessarily. The sharp rise is mostly accounted for by prisoners being sentenced to immediate custody, as well as longer sentences for sex and drug offences.
True!
‘Mr Big’, who’s real name is Jonathon Moorby, was known to be one of the top drug dealers in the country before his arrest in 2014. Before his trial, he fled to Thailand, where he lived for three years before the police managed to track him down. In his absence, he was found guilty and given nearly 20 years in prison. Remember kids, drugs aren’t ‘big’ or clever.
True!
An out and out City slicker (you know, the ones whose aftershave smacks you in the face on the tube), Nicholas Levene was living the high life on other people’s money. Famous for over the top parties – he once spent an eye-watering £588,000 on family celebration – Levene, known as ‘Beano’ (of course he was), was sentenced to 13 years inside for conning investors out of more than £32m.
False!
It’s actually closer to 2000%. From the ‘Golden Crescent’ in Afghanistan into the UK, the markup is enormous as product needs to change hands many times as it makes its way west. This makes London a super-valuable drug market; heroin here costs twice what it does in France!
True!
London-based Abbas Gokal defrauded the Bank of Credit and Commerce International for $1.2 billion. He was the chairman of what was once the world’s largest shipping company – before it emerged that he borrowed under the company name to fund his own lavish lifestyle. He was extradited back to the UK in 1994 where he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. He reportedly now lives in west London.
False
But only just – Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, famously stole around £450m from his companies’ pension funds. His life was a crazy story. He escaped Nazi occupation, fought in World War Two, moved to the UK, created a publishing empire, was elected MP for Buckingham and, finally, died mysteriously on his yacht. See, crazy.
Discover more
Good luck!
The Big Smoke is clearly smoking (among other things) way too much. Every major city in the world sees it’s share of drug use, but London is a different animal. Sky News reported that the capital consumes twice as much cocaine as any other European city. Every. Single. Day. But it’s not just London’s appetite that makes it such valuable turf: getting drugs in is hard, which means the markups are bonkers.
True!
False!
The National Crime Agency, or NCA, actually had a budget of £448 million in 2015/2016. Still seems like a lot of crime-fighting dough, right? Well, not when you consider the budgets of its predecessors. When the NCA was born, it absorbed a bunch of other government agencies, the combined bankroll of which totalled £812m per year – and that was in 2013.
True!
According to a BBC report in 2017, money laundering is the biggest criminal scandal in the capital. Even so, £90 billion is a LOT of cash. To put it into perspective, The Shard is valued at about £2b, meaning you could buy 45 Shards with the money that’s laundered in London every year. That or 15 billion £6 pints, we know what we’d rather have.
False!
It’s actually closer to 90 percent. It’s hardly surprising that so many financial crimes occur in the capital when the risk of being reported is so low. It’s not just the finance industry that’s at risk either, according to experts, individuals, public services and even charities are all targets for fraud and other crimes. Stay vigilant, London.
True!
Some seriously smart people (with seriously strong stomachs) at King’s College London tested London’s waste water to find out just how much of the white powder Londoners are consuming. The results are shocking: an average of 23kg of cocaine is taken in London every day. That’s more than half a million doses every 24 hours. Time to kick the habit, London.
True!
Between 1993 and 2016 the number of prisoners in the UK rose from just over 44,000 to more than 85,000. What’s more, the average time spent in prison increased by nearly two years between 1999 and 2015. But does this mean there’s more crime? Not necessarily. The sharp rise is mostly accounted for by prisoners being sentenced to immediate custody, as well as longer sentences for sex and drug offences.
True!
‘Mr Big’, who’s real name is Jonathon Moorby, was known to be one of the top drug dealers in the country before his arrest in 2014. Before his trial, he fled to Thailand, where he lived for three years before the police managed to track him down. In his absence, he was found guilty and given nearly 20 years in prison. Remember kids, drugs aren’t ‘big’ or clever.
True!
An out and out City slicker (you know, the ones whose aftershave smacks you in the face on the tube), Nicholas Levene was living the high life on other people’s money. Famous for over the top parties – he once spent an eye-watering £588,000 on family celebration – Levene, known as ‘Beano’ (of course he was), was sentenced to 13 years inside for conning investors out of more than £32m.
False!
It’s actually closer to 2000%. From the ‘Golden Crescent’ in Afghanistan into the UK, the markup is enormous as product needs to change hands many times as it makes its way west. This makes London a super-valuable drug market; heroin here costs twice what it does in France!
True!
London-based Abbas Gokal defrauded the Bank of Credit and Commerce International for $1.2 billion. He was the chairman of what was once the world’s largest shipping company – before it emerged that he borrowed under the company name to fund his own lavish lifestyle. He was extradited back to the UK in 1994 where he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. He reportedly now lives in west London.
False
But only just – Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, famously stole around £450m from his companies’ pension funds. His life was a crazy story. He escaped Nazi occupation, fought in World War Two, moved to the UK, created a publishing empire, was elected MP for Buckingham and, finally, died mysteriously on his yacht. See, crazy.
How much do you know about corruption in the capital?
High-level crime in London goes deeper than you might imagine.
Test your knowledge by finding out whether these wild stories and mind-blowing statistics are true or false…
Right now, a bingeable, addictive show is exactly what we all need to get through lockdown. And that’s what you’re about to get. Since pivoting to Time In, we’ve been bringing you the best things you can do from home – and one of those is watching the new Sky original, ‘Gangs of London’. All episodes of this action-packed drama will be available on Thursday April 23, but we’ve teamed up with Sky to bring you a whole lot of insider info before it drops. The show, while entirely fictional, is based on true events which happened in London and real people involved in money laundering and drug-smuggling. So, we thought we’d test your knowledge of corruption in the capital.
London is Europe’s most valuable
drug market
The National Crime Agency’s budget for last year was more than a billion pounds
£90 billion a year is laundered in London
80 percent of financial crimes in the UK go unreported
London’s cocaine market is
worth £1 billion
The prison population of the UK has nearly doubled in the last 30 years
‘Mr Big’ was one of the UK’s biggest drug dealers
A City trader stole more than £32 million from tycoons and celebrities using a Ponzi scheme
The cost of heroin in the UK is about 1000% times higher than its source price
One man stole more than $1 billion from a bank
A former MP stole half a billion pounds
The Big Smoke is clearly smoking (among other things) way too much. Every major city in the world sees it’s share of drug use, but London is a different animal. Sky News reported that the capital consumes twice as much cocaine as any other European city. Every. Single. Day. But it’s not just London’s appetite that makes it such valuable turf: getting drugs in is hard, which means the markups are bonkers.
True!
False!
The National Crime Agency, or NCA, actually had a budget of £448 million in 2015/2016. Still seems like a lot of crime-fighting dough, right? Well, not when you consider the budgets of its predecessors. When the NCA was born, it absorbed a bunch of other government agencies, the combined bankroll of which totalled £812m per year – and that was in 2013.
True!
According to a BBC report in 2017, money laundering is the biggest criminal scandal in the capital. Even so, £90 billion is a LOT of cash. To put it into perspective, The Shard is valued at about £2b, meaning you could buy 45 Shards with the money that’s laundered in London every year. That or 15 billion £6 pints, we know what we’d rather have.
False!
It’s actually closer to 90 percent. It’s hardly surprising that so many financial crimes occur in the capital when the risk of being reported is so low. It’s not just the finance industry that’s at risk either, according to experts, individuals, public services and even charities are all targets for fraud and other crimes. Stay vigilant, London.
True!
Some seriously smart people (with seriously strong stomachs) at King’s College London tested London’s waste water to find out just how much of the white powder Londoners are consuming. The results are shocking: an average of 23kg of cocaine is taken in London every day. That’s more than half a million doses every 24 hours. Time to kick the habit, London.
True!
Between 1993 and 2016 the number of prisoners in the UK rose from just over 44,000 to more than 85,000. What’s more, the average time spent in prison increased by nearly two years between 1999 and 2015. But does this mean there’s more crime? Not necessarily. The sharp rise is mostly accounted for by prisoners being sentenced to immediate custody, as well as longer sentences for sex and drug offences.
True!
‘Mr Big’, who’s real name is Jonathon Moorby, was known to be one of the top drug dealers in the country before his arrest in 2014. Before his trial, he fled to Thailand, where he lived for three years before the police managed to track him down. In his absence, he was found guilty and given nearly 20 years in prison. Remember kids, drugs aren’t ‘big’ or clever.
True!
An out and out City slicker (you know, the ones whose aftershave smacks you in the face on the tube), Nicholas Levene was living the high life on other people’s money. Famous for over the top parties – he once spent an eye-watering £588,000 on family celebration – Levene, known as ‘Beano’ (of course he was), was sentenced to 13 years inside for conning investors out of more than £32m.
False!
It’s actually closer to 2000%. From the ‘Golden Crescent’ in Afghanistan into the UK, the markup is enormous as product needs to change hands many times as it makes its way west. This makes London a super-valuable drug market; heroin here costs twice what it does in France!
True!
London-based Abbas Gokal defrauded the Bank of Credit and Commerce International for $1.2 billion. He was the chairman of what was once the world’s largest shipping company – before it emerged that he borrowed under the company name to fund his own lavish lifestyle. He was extradited back to the UK in 1994 where he was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment. He reportedly now lives in west London.
False
But only just – Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell, famously stole around £450m from his companies’ pension funds. His life was a crazy story. He escaped Nazi occupation, fought in World War Two, moved to the UK, created a publishing empire, was elected MP for Buckingham and, finally, died mysteriously on his yacht. See, crazy.
Experience gangland London like never before with the long-awaited Sky Original, ‘Gangs of London’. All episodes of this visceral nine-part drama will be available on Sky on Thursday 23 April. Head to our
Time In page for our exclusive look at the characters, the episodes and behind-the-scenes stories.
Back to top
Discover more