The missing detail: Meet Akhmed Yakoob’s ‘gang leader’ business partner

Exclusive: The Dispatch can reveal that last year, the breakout star of Birmingham politics set up a business with a convicted criminal

Morning Patchers — today’s story is about Akhmed Yakoob, the independent parliamentary candidate in Ladywood whose brash style and pro-Gaza message has earnt him huge attention in recent months.

Yakoob’s short political career has featured both impressive results (coming in third place at the West Midlands mayoral election against the odds) and multiple scandals. He’s been profiled in the Sunday Times and he’s a frequent face in the Daily Mail.

But despite the considerable attention he has received, a key detail appears to have been missed in the coverage until now.

Last year, Yakoob decided to go into business with a convicted criminal: Erdington-based Amjad Waseem. They incorporated a company called AIX Investment Group Ltd, in which they are the two directors.

In 2012, Waseem was sentenced to 54 months in prison due to his role as “gang leader” in a £1.25-million supercar scam. A judge at the time said Waseem “played an integral role in the conspiracy.”

Sources close to Yakoob (the candidate refused to address the matter himself in an on-the-record statement) say that while AIX was incorporated, the deal fell through and the company is not trading. But his decision to go into business with a convicted criminal will raise serious questions about his judgment. 

The Dispatch has also learnt of Yakoob’s associations with other deeply unsavoury individuals. This includes a man who was barred as a solicitor after it emerged he had a stalking conviction for an incident in which he threatened a woman over the phone and followed her in a vehicle over a two-week period. The man described Yakoob as his “big brother” in 2022.

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Brum in brief

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Jane Kahn and Patti Bell in 1981. Photo by: Paul Edmond.

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The missing detail: Meet Akhmed Yakoob’s ‘gang leader’ business partner

By Emily O’Sullivan and Jack Walton

It was early on the morning of 4 May, hours before the West Midlands would announce its new mayor, and an embarrassing story was breaking for the Labour Party.

Insiders thought Andy Street might cling on to the mayoralty by the skin of his teeth, providing Rishi Sunak with a rare bright moment in a disastrous set of local elections. The reason? A rank outsider candidate, wearing Prada trainers and promoting a singular pro-Gaza message, had stolen a massive chunk of the Labour vote.

A frustrated Labour source told the BBC it was “the Middle East not West Midlands that will have won Street the mayoralty. Once again Hamas are the real villains.” The comments caused immediate backlash and forced an apology from Labour.

As it turned out, Andy Street didn’t win. Richard Parker pipped it for Labour by just 1508 votes. Soon after, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was at the ICC hailing a “phenomenal” win. It was Labour’s day. 

But it was also Akhmed Yakoob’s day. Going into the count, Yakoob was a mere curiosity: a mayoral candidate in a fast car with an expensive suit and lots of TikTok followers. He was part of the entertaining side-show that tends to accompany elections; perfect material for a quirky interview, but not taken seriously as a candidate. 

Akhmed Yakoob on the day of the mayoral election. Photo: Anthony Devlin/Getty Images.

But after the election, that changed. Yakoob had attracted an extraordinary 69,621  votes, 11.7% of the total, vastly more than anyone expected from an unknown independent. He had also come seriously close to spoiling Labour’s party. From obscurity, he had become a force in the region’s politics. As a Labour source who was at the count recalls, “It was apparent almost as soon as the results started to come through, from the numbers he was getting, that it wouldn’t be the last we’d be hearing of Yakoob.”

After Sunak called a surprise early general election, Yakoob chose to contest the seat of Birmingham Ladywood, where he had performed impressively in the mayoral race. Since then, he’s asserted himself as one of the most high profile independent candidates in the country.

As his profile swells and the election draws closer, the spotlight on him has increased, including being profiled by The Sunday Times and making regular appearances in the Daily Mail. He’s had to issue two public apologies, for misogynistic comments he made on a podcast (he said “70% of hell will be women”) and for falsely accusing a local teacher of making racist comments while canvassing for Labour. But other aspects of Yakoob’s character have avoided public scrutiny.

For example, The Dispatch has been looking into Yakoob’s business connections over the past few weeks. They include a man called Amjad Waseem, who became the director of a company alongside Yakoob last year, and who also happens to be a former “gang leader” who was involved in a £1.25 million supercar scam in 2012.

When approached for comment by The Dispatch, a spokesperson for Yakoob’s campaign said: 

“We are focussed on winning the hearts and minds of the people of Ladywood, talking about the issues that matter to them: the need for a ceasefire, and dealing with the cost of living crisis. Their voices have gone unheard at Westminster for too long and now is the chance to vote in a breath of fresh air on 4 July.”

The gang leader and the supercar scam

Yakoob’s father, Muhammad Yakoob, arrived in Britain in the 1970s, working as a milk salesman before returning to Pakistan in his retirement. He now lives in a house in Azad Kashmir, a disputed region bordering the Pakistani province of Punjab, which is often featured in the backdrop of Akhmed’s TikTok videos. A YouTube video showcases the impressive property, which was built in 2016, complete with a camel, two horses and two chained-up monkeys.

Prior to his recent foray into politics, Akhmed Yakoob — who has four brothers, four sisters, and four children — worked as a solicitor. Seemingly destined to enter criminal defence from the get-go, he told The Muslim Mum that at university, he “was only awake during the criminal law lectures.” He runs Maurice Andrews Solicitors and also works at Jacobs Law Solicitors with his brothers Asead and Ajmal.

Eight years before running for mayor, he served as a senior leader of The Pakistan Muslim League (Noon) UK branch (PMLN), after being appointed vice president of the group in September 2016. The PMLN is a centre-right political party in Pakistan. Its founder, the country’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whom Yakoob posted Instagram pictures with in 2017, was convicted in two corruption cases linked to 2016 Panama Papers revelations about his family’s properties, but was later acquitted of all charges.

Nowadays, Yakoob’s political aspirations are largely centred on one message: that the Labour Party has failed people with its stance on Gaza. Various features of his persona — his supercar collection (among the many companies at which he has served as a director is one called I Drive Prestige Cars Birmingham Ltd), his expensive clothing, and his ability to connect with people on social media — have allowed him to garner the necessary attention to spread his message. But Gaza is the principal reason voters are turning to him. 

Surveys show that many young Muslims, among many others, are horrified by Israel’s attacks on Gaza and feel disillusioned by the response of Westminster politicians. And at the 2021 census, 53% of residents in the Ladywood constituency identified as Muslim, one of the highest proportions in the country. The Sunday Times has called him the “one man in Britain who embodies the way our politics have changed, and continues to change after October 7”. The Daily Mail wrote that he was known as “the Gaza geezer”.

What seems to have been lost in a lot of the excitement and scandal, though, is a serious examination of the company that Akhmed Yakoob keeps.

Alongside his political aspirations, Yakoob has a vast array of business interests. He has seven active companies, three of which were registered for the purpose of buying and selling real estate.