A Criminal Enterprise Measured in Decades
Two businessmen have been sentenced to sixteen years in prison apiece for orchestrating illegal arms deals worth tens of millions of pounds across some of the world’s most volatile regions. Christos Farmakis, 48, and David Greenhalgh, 68, spent the better part of a decade sourcing weapons from former communist states and channelling them to embargoed nations in Africa and the Middle East. The sentences, handed down at Southwark Crown Court, follow a seven-year investigation by HMRC — one of the most significant arms-trafficking prosecutions in British legal history.
Judge Sally-Ann Hales KC was unsparing in her assessment. “Their offending was deliberate, sophisticated, financially motivated and persisted over many years,” she said, describing the arrangement as “a long-standing and mutually beneficial criminal enterprise.” These were not opportunists. They were professionals who understood exactly what they were doing and why it was prohibited.
The Scope of the Deals
The range of materiel on offer was extraordinary. Prosecuting counsel Edward Burge KC told the court that the pair offered AK-47 assault rifles, ammunition, bombs, rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank guided missiles, fighter jets, and tanks — all, he stressed, “with no paperwork required and no licence from the UK applied for or obtained.” The customers were armed groups operating in some of the most unstable and repressive states on earth.
Greenhalgh’s most egregious transactions involved the supply of Russian-manufactured MiG-29, Su-25, and Su-27 fighter jets, as well as Mil Mi-24V attack helicopters, to Sudan between 2009 and 2011 — a period coinciding with the war in Darfur. Separately, emails produced at trial showed him offering to deliver 100,000 weapons and fifty million rounds of ammunition to South Sudan, a consignment valued at over fourteen million dollars. He and Farmakis also explored supplying ex-Soviet jets to Libya, with correspondence revealing their discussions about how to have the aircraft inspected and delivered “without drawing attention of the authorities.”
The Mechanics of Evasion
What distinguished this operation was its structural sophistication. Greenhalgh operated through his Airservices group of companies, registered across multiple jurisdictions including the United Kingdom, Greece, North Macedonia, and South Sudan. That web of entities served a clear purpose: to route transactions through overseas vehicles and thereby evade British sanctions and export controls. He referred to the deals in internal emails as “sensitive projects” — a studied understatement.
HMRC had, in fact, put Greenhalgh on notice. At a meeting in January 2012, investigators informed him that his British nationality obliged him to obtain UK export licences regardless of where the transactions were nominally conducted. His defence counsel, James Hines KC, argued in mitigation that Greenhalgh believed this obligation did not extend to his Greek co-defendant Farmakis. The court was evidently unpersuaded.
Edwige Hill, deputy director in HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, stated plainly that Greenhalgh “knowingly and repeatedly circumvented those controls, forging documents and routing deals through overseas companies to evade detection.” Strict export licensing exists precisely to prevent military equipment from reaching the wrong hands. That framework was not merely ignored — it was actively subverted.
Farmakis: Convicted in Absentia
Farmakis absconded before the trial began and was convicted on nine counts of involvement in prohibited weapons sales in his absence. He had used his position as an adviser to Greater London Enterprise — a body in receipt of both local and central government funding — as a veneer of respectability while conducting the illegal dealings. The contrast between that public-facing role and his private conduct was, by any measure, remarkable.
His sixteen-year sentence was imposed without him present to hear it. Should he be apprehended, the term stands.
Greenhalgh: The Verdict and Its Implications
Greenhalgh was convicted by a jury on ten counts of involvement in prohibited weapons sales spanning July 2009 to January 2016. Judge Hales acknowledged that he had presented at trial “as someone who is something of a wheeler and dealer,” a man whose commercial versatility had taken him from exporting second-hand clothing to Africa to projects involving sugar refineries, copper mines, and even a theme park. That breadth of legitimate enterprise made his criminal choices, in the judge’s words, “all the more disappointing.”
His defence highlighted his age and clean prior record. Neither proved sufficient mitigation against the gravity and duration of the offending.
What the Case Reveals About Export Control Enforcement
The prosecution spanned seven years of investigative work by HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service. That timeline reflects both the complexity of tracing transactions through multiple jurisdictions and the evidentiary threshold required to bring such a case to court. It is worth noting that this investigation reached its conclusion — a point that cannot be taken for granted in cross-border arms trafficking cases.
The case is a reminder that export control regimes depend not merely on legislation but on the capacity and willingness of enforcement agencies to pursue long, resource-intensive investigations. HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service demonstrated both. The sentences handed down at Southwark Crown Court represent a proportionate response to conduct that, left unchecked, directly fuelled armed conflict.