SITTING at his desk in a small office at a secret location in Birmingham, Tony Quigley carefully removes a machete out of its green sheath.
He places it next to two baseball bats and breathes a sigh of relief that the dangerous weapons are now safely out of the hands of violent Birmingham loan shark Lee Reece Walker, who used them to torture a “client” he snatched off a Hodge Hill street after he failed to pay him back £800 he had loaned him.
“Loan sharks murder people’s souls,” said Mr Quigley, chief of the Birmingham-based National Illegal Money Lending Team.
“They erode every last drop of quality of someone’s life.
“The impact of loan sharks I have witnessed first-hand has been heart-breaking. At times it’s even brought me to tears.
“People often borrow a very tiny amount and end up owing thousands, then live in fear with every knock at the door or ring of the phone, it destroys them and it destroys entire families.
“That’s why we are determined to fight this menace and bring them to justice.”
The team has come a long way since it was first launched in 2004, when Birmingham City Council was asked to help the Government identify the true extent of the loan shark problem.
“At the time loan sharks were community myths, the ghost economy, there was no real evidence they existed and they were pretty much getting away of running an underground illegal money network Scot free,” said Mr Quigley.
He set about gathering a team of seven loan shark investigators, all coming from different backgroundsm including private investigators and Trading Standards officers, who together quickly proved to be a force to be reckoned with.
Within two months of being set up, the team had already won its first victory – bringing about the successful prosecution of Hall Green loan shark Mark Johnson, who charged his impoverished clients up to 8,000 per cent interest.
By 2006 the work of the team was proving such a success it was given funding to launch in Liverpool, Bradford, Leeds and Sheffield and by 2008 the Birmingham investigators were tracking down loan sharks in five regions across the country – including the Midlands; north west; Yorkshire and Humberside; east and the south east of England.
Meanwhile, similar projects also sprung up the south west, north east, London, the east Midlands, Scotland and Wales, which were run by separate teams.
Last December the Government decided Birmingham’s team was so successful it was to take over the whole of the work for England, while Scotland and Wales would run their own separate departments.
