ATTOCK: Photos have emerged showing the enormous 40-room mansion a jailed UK tax-cheat known as ‘the General’ secretly built in Pakistan.
The £2.3million ‘Buckingham Palace’ -style property in the Attock region is half-built, patrolled by armed guards and even has its own library, private cinema and servant quarters.
For years, Mohammed Suleman Khan tried to evade the attention of police as he built up a secret fortune from behind the walls of his Moseley home, in Birmingham.
Even to other criminals in the area ‘the General’ – also known as Don, MSK or Sully – was an elusive character, rarely seen in public, Birmingham Mail reports.
While careful to avoid showing any trappings of wealth in the UK, the 46-year-old paid for the mansion to be built in Pakistan, police discovered, and now pictures of it have emerged.
Khan was originally imprisoned for four years in April 2014 after defrauding the taxman of £450,000.
He was due for release in April 2016, but faces 10 more years behind bars after defaulting on a Proceeds of Crime (POC) order.
One Attock local said Khan bought the two-acre piece of land to build his huge palace some eight years ago but work stopped after the tax-evasion case started against him in the UK.
The unfinished compound has become a “no-go area” for locals as around a dozen armed security men guard it.
“If you try to get into or jump from the wall they will shoot you,” a neighbour claimed, adding, “they often do aerial firing at night too.”
The compound has minaret security pickets on its corner, pictures show.
It is believed there are up to 40 rooms in the mansion, which also has a swimming pool and lush lawns in the backyard.
Locals say Khan even won approval from the local government to name the palace after his own name in Urdu – Suleman Abad.
The village is on the boundary of Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province and people in the village call Khan “Don”.
One said: “Don used to come here off and on. Even children call him ‘Don’ and know that this huge palace is his house.”
Khan had been a regular visitor over the years, another local said, and was usually accompanied by armed guards.
“He always helped people in the village,” they said.
The original tax scam was exposed after police raided Khan’s Moseley home and found plans for the Pakistan ‘Buckingham Palace-style’ mansion.
In February 2016 it was revealed detectives planned to seize and sell his Birmingham family home after he was sentenced to a further 10 years for refusing to pay back £2.2million.
In court, Khan’s defence portrayed him as a legitimate businessman who had earned around £400,000 over a nine-year period from debt collecting and other business interests in the UK and abroad.
But police found no evidence of a legitimate debt collecting company and their investigation proved he had netted over £1 million during that period, without paying the required tax and National Insurance.
The court heard the outer shell and roof of the Pakistan building had been completed by Khan at a cost of £893,000.
Once finished, the property would have been valued at £2.3 million.
Khan did not utter a word during his police interview or court appearances, aside from ‘guilty’ when he admitted cheating the public revenue during an appearance at Birmingham Crown Court in November 2013.
