Emma Rauf, a check-in assistant at Manchester Airport for Emirates, has pleaded guilty to money laundering offences after investigators linked her to a cash-smuggling network that moved nearly £30m out of the UK to Dubai. She was convicted with seven other people following a trial at Bolton Crown Court.

The case centres on a long-running operation that ran between December 2017 and November 2019, with cash carried on flights from Manchester, Birmingham and Brussels. The National Crime Agency said couriers moved hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time, with the money hidden in clothing inside suitcases and passed through airport check-in systems on the way to the United Arab Emirates.

Rauf, from Wilmslow, Cheshire, abused her position to help couriers get excess baggage containing cash onto flights without proper checks, investigators said. When she was not working, she contacted colleagues and told them to handle the luggage in the same way. The gang is said to have gathered criminal cash from across northern England, including Greater Manchester, before sending it on to Dubai.

Investigators said Rauf flew to and from the UAE seven times over seven months while reporting into work as being sick. That detail gave the case its sharper edge: a worker trusted with airport access was also moving in the same travel pattern as the people she was helping. The inquiry began after Border Force officers seized almost £800,000 in two separate incidents, including an arrest at Manchester Airport in October 2018 when more than £300,000 was found in the luggage of courier Sheikh Jobe.

There was also a darker backdrop around Rauf’s private life. More than £400,000 was stolen from her car, which she and her brother Ben Royle used, and a house in Hale linked to the pair was later targeted in a shooting. No one was injured, but the episode underlined how far the money trail and its fallout extended beyond the airport terminals.

The outstanding question is how much of the almost £30m had already reached Dubai before the NCA disrupted the network. What is already clear is that the case exposed a patient, organised pipeline that depended on insider help, and that airport security failed at enough points for it to run for nearly two years.