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May 2022
Harrogate guest house owner plans to appeal cannabis racket conviction
A Harrogate guest house owner who played the role of “facilitator” in a half-a-million-pound cannabis racket has sacked her legal team as she pursues plans to appeal her conviction.
Yoko Banks, 74, rented out her properties to an Albanian drug gang for “industrial” cannabis production “in the expectation of significant profit”, Leeds Crown Court heard.
The pensioner, of Scargill Road, was jailed for three-and-a-half years in August last year after she admitted three counts of being concerned in the production of cannabis.
Her six co-conspirators, Visar Sellaj, 33, Kujtim Brahaj, 50, Indrit Brahaj, 27, Bledar Elezaj, 36, Andi Kokaj, 23, and 31-year-old Erblin Elezaj, an illegal immigrant, were jailed for a combined 22 years for various offences including drug supply and production of skunk cannabis.
Banks, who owns properties across Harrogate, was back in court today to face financial confiscation proceedings under the Proceeds of Crime Act.
But they were postponed once again after the court heard she was still intent on appealing her conviction and wanted to leave her legal team in favour of another firm of solicitors.
Prosecutor Michael Bosomworth said there was also an issue with a statement provided by one of Banks’s co-defendants, the gang’s ringleader Sellaj, who claimed that some of the money in his bank account had been transferred to him by relatives in Albania.
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He added, however, that the major sticking point involved Banks and her “complicated accounts and property empire”.
Mr Bosomworth said Banks was now claiming “she only understands Japanese” – although she spoke in English in the dock and appeared to understand everything that was put to her.
Matters have been further complicated by Banks initially telling her legal team she didn’t wish to appeal, but then changing her mind.
She had pursued the appeal “notwithstanding she told (her solicitors) she wasn’t pursuing it” and was now in the process of transferring legal aid to a new team of solicitors.
If her legal aid application is granted, it would mean her costs being covered at least partly by public money.
Banks has "messed everyone around" for 18 months
Mr Bosomworth said there had been an issue between Banks and her present solicitors and she was “awaiting legal aid to be transferred”.
He said it was the Crown’s case that Banks had “messed everyone around for the last 18 months” and that the prosecution would “invite the court to consider the matter on the basis she is just not co-operating”.
He added that any order made today in terms of benefit and confiscation amount would “inevitably” be challenged by Banks who, as things stood, did not have any legal representation.
Mr Bosomworth said it was incumbent on Banks to submit a statement to the court showing her assets and “what the issues are”, but she had not yet served one.
When Recorder Mr Baird asked Banks if she understood what had been said and that she must submit a statement, she said she did and that she had “messed up quite a lot” during the legal case.
At the previous hearing in January, the Crown said it was not yet in a position to make a financial confiscation ruling because Banks’s defence team needed more time to delve into her “complicated” accounts and extensive “property empire”.
Leeds Crown Court. Picture: the Stray Ferret.
Banks’s then defence counsel said that a forensic accountant had been instructed to scrutinise her accounts and the “considerable amount” of properties and other assets she owned.
Mr Recorder Baird adjourned the confiscation proceedings until July 29.
He said:
Banks was 'facilitator' in cannabis racket
At the sentence hearing in August 2021, the court heard that the “professional”, London-based gang had invested tens of thousands of pounds into three cannabis factories at Banks’s properties on Alexandra Road, Woodlands Road and Somerset Road near Harrogate town centre.
The criminals had even dug a trench outside the three-storey Edwardian villa on Alexandra Road through which they fed electricity cables to the house to power the “highly sophisticated” cultivation system and bypass the electricity grid.
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Their plot finally unravelled when police were called to the five-bedroom villa on September 26, 2020, after reports of a “disturbance” in the street involving what appeared to be two rival gangs vying for the cannabis farm.
Banks had rented her properties to the Albanians through an “unidentified individual who goes by the name of Francesco”, who sub-let the houses to the gang’s ringleader Sellaj.
The total potential yield of the cannabis factories was valued at up to £456,000, not including previous harvests.
Although Banks was not involved in the cultivation, she had played a “facilitating” or advisory role in the plot and was constantly “pressing (the gang) be paid by them”.
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 the three properties and was also receiving “high” deposits.
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