Document trail adds twists to Rauf's tale of deceit

CONVICTED fraudster Abdul Rauf may have convinced deputy first minister Nicola Sturgeon that he was worth a letter of commendation in court.

However, a Scotsman investigation has uncovered a picture of a man continually wheeling and dealing before and after his conviction for fraud in 1996.

He was convicted for claiming income support while receiving rent from a second property in Edinburgh's Dalkeith Road which he failed to declare – while living in a plush 400,000 detached home in Glasgow's Maxwell Park area.

In 1996, he was jailed for four years for stealing 58,624 in pension and benefit payments while he ran a Post Office in Edinburgh's Brougham Street.

We can now reveal that he also owned a third flat in Lochrin Place, Tollcross, near his post office business, from 1981 to 1994.

In an unusual move, he then sold the flat to his wife Irfana for 14,000 in November 1994.

It was at about this time, while Rauf was stealing thousands of pounds from the Post Office, that the couple bought the large family home in Glasgow's Springkell Avenue for 93,000.

In August 1998, two years after Rauf was jailed, Mrs Rauf sold the Lochrin Place flat for 43,000. It is not known if she had rented out the flat or lived in it herself.

Throughout this period, Rauf also owned the Dalkeith Road flat, bought by him in 1986 for 28,100.

He told Social Security investigators that the flat had "slipped his mind" when he fraudulently claimed income support up to this year.

As well as the almost constant property dealing, there were a series of transactions carried out by Rauf on the Post Office property in Brougham Street, where he stole thousands of pounds.

In 1993, he signed a 25-year-lease on the Tollcross Post Office premises, owned by Post Office Counters Ltd, despite the fact that he had stolen money at the same property, leading up to his 1996 conviction. The annual rent was set at 9,200.

The records then show the property being sold to the Trustees of a business called Tollcross Post Office in 2001 for 95,000. Among the trustees was an Abdul Rauf Ali.

It is not known if this man is a relative of the previous lease-holder, Abdul Rauf.

Records also show that Rauf continued to lead a busy family life throughout this period, and is now father to five children.

His youngest, a daughter, was born in February last year. On the birth certificate he describes himself as an "accounts assistant".

On the older children's birth certificates he is listed as a "bank officer".