Two jailed over £2.3m Olympic authority fraud

Two men have been jailed for money laundering following a £2.3m fraud against the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA).

Abayomi Olowo, 48, of Windsor Road, Harrow, north-west London, guilty of four charges, received a prison sentence of four-and-a-half years.

Ayodele Odukoya, 42, of Paignton Close, Romford, Essex, guilty of two charges, was sentenced to three years and nine months.

Six people were cleared of charges.

The group was accused of laundering the cash after fraudsters tricked the ODA out of £2.3m.

Ansumana Kamara was the ringleader behind the £2.3m fraud against the ODA and an £86,000 fraud against Skanska, the construction firm working on landscaping the Olympic Park.

He obtained the £2.3m by pretending to be Skanska's finance director and writing to the ODA with a change of account details ahead of a bank transfer. The account details he gave were his own.

He pleaded guilty in September 2010 and was later jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Attempts were also made to defraud companies which had contracts with Skanska, including Dorset County Council - responsible for building the Weymouth Relief Road for the Olympic Route Network - Network Rail and a company called Universal Builders Supply.

The main plan, which was foiled, was to disguise the money trail by sending £2m to Nigeria before buying a parade of shops in Wolverhampton, said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Judge Martin Beddoe, sentencing Odukoya and Olowo, called it "a very significant sum of money".

He said: "I am told of the inevitable effect on your families as a consequence of what you did.

"I take the view that is something you should have thought about before you embarked upon this determined involvement in crime."

Sue Patten, head of the CPS central fraud group said: "In this case, the fraudsters directly targeted scarce public funds earmarked to ensure the success of London 2012."

The ODA said 95% of the money had been recovered and it hoped the outstanding £68,000 would be recovered through further investigation by Operation Podium.

A spokesman said: "Our payments system was reviewed and strengthened immediately after the incident to further limit the risk of fraud."

Earlier, Shamsidden Owo, 75, of Brookfield Road, Hackney, east London, was cleared of four counts of money laundering. Shakeela Ayub, 28, of Brudenell Road, Leeds, was acquitted of two counts.

Nadeem Khan, 38, of Richmond Crescent, Slough, Berkshire; Mbinty Kargbo, 26, of Crofton Road, Camberwell, south-east London; Sanjeev Kumar, 30, of Bell Street, Bilston, West Midlands; and Sakiru Adewale, 58, of no fixed abode, were each cleared of one charge.