A man who oversaw a family racket smuggling stolen diggers and other machinery to the Middle East for sale on the black market has been sentenced.

Ali Ghasemi, of Harrow Weald Park, Harrow, played a part in a criminal export operation in which JCBs, rollers, telehandlers (telescopic handlers), forklifts and tractors - many of them worth around £50,000 each - were sent to a company called Al Mustaqeem based in the city of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The 79-year-old acted as a father figure to brothers Behroz Sayed, 35, and Ali Farad Sayed, 23, and their sisters Najia Sayed, 31, and Krezhal Sayed, 24, whose mother he knew.

The conspirators loaded the stolen plant machinery into shipping containers supplied and transported to the Middle East by a company that thought they were empty.

The vehicles and equipment were then sold on in the UAE at great profit thanks to the country's construction boom.

Investigating officer, Detective Constable James Elliott, of the Metropolitan Police's Plant and Agricultural National Intelligence Unit (PANIU), said: “The demand for high value plant machinery in the UAE was sky-high and Ghasemi and the Sayed family sought to make money from that with criminal methods.

“We believe that the vehicles had been stolen to order for clients in the UAE. Ghasemi and Sayed facilitated their export so that they could be sold on. A financial investigation to establish how much they made from their criminal enterprise is ongoing.

"Documentation we seized indicates that hundreds of thousands of pounds has passed through the family’s accounts over the course of the conspiracy.”

Ghasemi was convicted of conspiracy to conceal, disguise, transfer or remove criminal property on Thursday March 20 at Southwark Crown Court and will be sentenced today. He was an investor in Al Mustaqeem, Behroz Sayed was the firm's managing director and Sayed Mahjub - Najia Sayed's husband - was an employee and used the cover name 'Ash'.

The men initially arranged for shipping invoices to be directed to Behroz Sayed at the Sayed family home address in Ruth Close, Stanmore.

Behroz later travelled to Sharjah to receive some of the stolen items, so invoices were subsequently directed to a 'Javad Jan' at Ghasemi’s address.

Officers from the PANIU began investigating the family in July 2009 after Avon and Somerset Police recovered two telehandlers in a shipping container from a remote farm in Wedmore, Somerset.

Enquiries with the freight company revealed large numbers of orders for shipping requests from the family.

Subsequent warrants executed jointly with Hertfordshire Police and Thames Valley Police resulted in numerous other plant machinery being recovered across southern England and the family member's homes were raided in 2009.

Officers found incriminating documents such records of the stolen vehicles’ identification numbers, accounts books with various family members’ names shown next to payments made and received, and photographs of the stolen equipment.

Najia Sayed’s role was to launder the sale proceeds via her bank accounts while Krezhal Sayed created false sales invoices for the machinery in an attempt to legitimise the transactions.

Ali Farad Sayed helped arrange the shipping and was arrested in South Ockendon, Essex,  near a freight container ordered by his brother, Behroz Sayed, which contained two stolen BMWs.

Behroz Sayed, of Ruth Close, Stanmore, and Sayed Mahjub, of Coxe Place, Wealdstone, admitted conspiracy to conceal, disguise, transfer or remove criminal property on July 1 last year and were jailed for five years and four years respectively on September 6.

Najia Sayed of Lower High Street, Watford, Hertfordshire, admitted conspiracy to conceal, disguise, transfer or remove criminal property

on July 3 least year and was sentenced to two-and-a-half-years in prison.

Ali Farad Sayed and Krezhal Sayed, both of Ruth Close, Stanmore, denied conspiracy to conceal, disguise, transfer or remove criminal property but were found guilty on July 31 2013 and were to sentenced to identical jail terms of two and a half years on September 6 and December 20.