A cage fighter convicted of taking part in a £53m armed robbery has been excused from paying back his alleged share of the stolen cash after a secret court hearing.

The Crown Prosecution Service has confirmed that Paul Allen, from Chatham in Kent, has been let off repaying more than £1.23m said to have been proceeds of the 2006 Securitas raid in Tonbridge.

The cash heist, the largest in British criminal history, involved a large gang, some posing as police officers. The manager of the depot, Colin Dixon, and his family were kidnapped at gunpoint.

The raiders left behind £153m because they could not fit any more into their getaway lorry. Police later recovered £21m of the missing cash; the remainder has never been found.

Four days after the robbery Allen fled to Morocco where he was planning to live off his share of the loot. However, he was tracked down, arrested and flown back to the UK under police guard in January 2008.

At Woolwich crown court the following year he pleaded guilty to three charges linked to the robbery and was sentenced to 18 years in prison. His lawyers said he had not handled or obtained any firearms used in the raid.

Allen, now in his late 30s, has since been released. Information obtained by the Evening Standard under a freedom of information request shows he only repaid £420.

At a hearing sometime in the past 18 months an application was made by lawyers on behalf of Allen for a certificate of inadequacy establishing that he did not have the funds to repay the £1.23m confiscation order.

If the CPS decides not to contest an application then the subsequent hearing is in private before a judge at the original court where the confiscation order was first imposed.



That practice was criticised by Bob Neill, the Conservative MP who is chair of the Commons justice select committee. He told the Standard: “You can understand the public feeling that the person who has committed a criminal offence and blown it all shouldn’t get a greater benefit than the person who happened not to be smart enough to get rid of it. On the face of it, this flies against the presumption of justice being done in public.”



A CPS spokesperson said: “This case was handled in line with the relevant legislation. We are unable to discuss it in detail as proceedings were not conducted in public. The CPS works hard to seize assets from criminals to stop them from benefiting from their crimes.

“In a small number of cases, a certificate of inadequacy can be offered when the sale of a person’s assets does not meet the original valuation. We seized £80m of assets from convicted criminals in 2017-18 and our partner agencies collected an additional £40m on CPS confiscation orders.”



