Harrogate guest house owner Yoko Banks ordered to repay £140,000 for role in half-a-million-pound cannabis racket

Property tycoon Yoko Banks, 72, rented out three properties to a London-based Albanian drug gang who set up large-scale cannabis factories harvesting “industrial” amounts of the highly potent skunk variety in some of Harrogate’s most desirable and affluent residential streets.

Banks, who was constantly in touch with the drug conspirators during their mega-money drug operation but played no active part in the cultivation process, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in August 20201 after she admitted three counts of being concerned in the supply of cannabis.

Her six co-conspirators Andi Kokaj, 23, Visar Sellaj, 33, Kujtim Brahaj, 50, Indrit Brahaj, 27, Bledar Elezaj, 36, and 31-year-old Erblin Elezaj, were jailed for a combined 22 years for various offences including drug supply and cannabis production.

On Friday, the disgraced former guest-house owner appeared for the final confiscation hearing at Leeds Crown Court under the Proceeds of Crime Act following a protracted case due in large part to Banks’s own “complex web” of properties and assets and what the prosecution described as her reluctance to co-operate with the financial investigation.

Prosecutor Martin Bosomworth said that it was agreed by both the prosecution and defence that Banks had benefited from the drug racket to the tune of £142,330.

He said it was agreed by both parties that the amount available to her was £565,347 - essentially half a million in assets or properties.

Judge Rachim Singh ordered Banks, of Scargill Road, to pay back the full benefit amount of £142,330 and gave her three months to pay on pain of 12 months in prison.

It comes just two months after one of Banks’s co-conspirators, Andi Kokaj, was made to pay back just £1 at the same court.

The nominal fee was ordered due to the Albanian national’s apparent lack of means, his relatively “minor” role in the audacious drug plot and his limited financial gain.

Mr Bosomworth said the gang had converted three of Banks’s properties on Alexandra Road, Woodlands Road and Somerset Road near Harrogate town centre into cannabis farms with potential yields of up to £456,000.

They made an estimated £345,000 from the highly sophisticated enterprise in which they dug a trench outside one of the properties to install high-speed broadband so they could keep a check on the premises on internet-enabled security cameras.

Their hugely lucrative plot finally unravelled when police were called to a five-bedroom villa owned by Banks in September 2020 after reports of a “disturbance” in the street involving what appeared to be two rival gangs vying for the cannabis farm.

The gang were able to watch the police drug raid live on the internet after rigging up a superfast broadband connection linked to cameras at the property, where officers found a crossbow at the front door.

Last year, Banks failed in her bid to have her conviction quashed after earlier admitting her guilt.

At a previous adjourned confiscation hearing, Mr Bosomworth said that Banks owned a string of “highly marketable” properties in some of Harrogate’s most desirable areas.

He added, however, that her “complicated accounts and property empire” were proving to be a major sticking point in the ongoing financial investigation.

On that occasion, Banks - who was due to be released from New Hall women’s prison on New Year’s Eve, halfway through her jail sentence - claimed she had no money because it had been frozen in her bank account.

Mr Bosomworth said that Sellaj, the gang’s ringleader, had made £438,000 from the cannabis-cultivation enterprise and that he had £76,000 in the bank which he could pay back into public coffers.

At a contested financial confiscation hearing in May last year, it was found that Indrit Brahaj had jointly benefited from the criminal enterprise to the tune of £133,328. In his case, a confiscation order of £24,082 was made.

Kujtim Brahaj was found to have benefited to the tune of £1,194.

The judge made a nominal confiscation order of £1 in his case due to limited financial means.

Banks, who had previous convictions for health-and-safety offences through her work, was due to be paid at least £12,000 a month in rent for allowing the gang to use the three properties and was also receiving “high” deposits, said Mr Bosomworth.

Ringleader Sellaj’s financial confiscation proceedings have been adjourned for a full-day hearing on a date to be fixed.

This will determine the amount of cash available to him and how much he must pay back.