TikTok lawyer Akhmed Yakoob has been charged with money laundering offences following a National Crime Agency investigation.
The 37-year-old, along with accountant Nabeel Afzal, 38, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on 17 June to each face three criminal charges.
Yakoob, of Perry Barr, and Azfal, of Edgbaston, both in Birmingham, are accused of money laundering; encouraging money laundering; and contravening a requirement to apply customer due diligence measures when establishing a business relationship.
The offences are alleged to have been committed between February 18, 2020 and January 8, 2021.
Yakoob, a lawyer with a love of fast cars and snazzy jewellery, is a criminal lawyer and a director at Maurice Andrews Solicitors in Birmingham.
His fleet of supercars has included a Rolls-Royce and a Lamborghini, although he now says he has ‘grown out of them’ after intensifying his focus on politics.
Yakoob entered the political fray last year when he announced he was taking Conservative incumbent Andy Street in the West Midlands mayoral race in May.
He ended up coming third, but won almost 70,000 votes as an independent who campaigned on a pro-Palestine ticket.
Defence solicitor Akhmed Yakoob (pictured), 37, has been charged with money laundering offences following a National Crime Agency investigation
Akhmed Yakoob is pictured arriving as votes were being counted ahead of the declaration for West Midlands mayor on May 4, 2024 – a battle ultimately won by Labour’s Richard Parker
Mr Yakoob is a prolific uploader of videos to TikTok, where he has thousands of followers
Father-of-four Mr Yakoob, who has four brothers and four sisters, was born in Birmingham in 1988 – his father having come to Britain from Pakistan in the 1970s.
He joined Maurice Andrews Solicitors in 2014, where he worked under the mentorship of Mr Andrews, the company’s director.
He has a huge following on TikTok where he complains about poor local bus services, unemployment, rubbish-strewn streets, lethally low NHS response times – and above all, the conflict in Gaza .
His viral clips carry headline captions such as ‘NHS failure’, ‘Our streets are filthy’, and ‘They have done nothing’.
Later that year, he also stood as an independent candidate in Labour’s shadow justice secretary Shabana Mahmood’s constituency of Birmingham Ladywood, finishing in second place with 33 per cent of the vote.
Yakoob was also at the centre of a controversy in July, when he represented two brothers involved in a brawl with police officers at Manchester Airport.
He later stepped aside from the pair claiming the media had ‘made the situation about me rather than police brutality and police misconduct’.
