Three people have been charged in connection with Operation Rize, a series of raids on safety deposit centres carried out by the Metropolitan Police in June last year.

Milton Woolf, 53, of West Heath Drive, Golders Green, a director of Safe Deposit Centres Limited, the company that controlled Hampstead Safe Depository, Edgware Safe Depository, and Park Lane Safe Depository, has been charged with 24 offences.

These included possession of a firearm without a certificate; having custody or control of counterfeit currency; concealing criminal property; possession of false identity documents.

Fellow director Jacqueline Swan, 45, of Hexham Road, Barnet, has been charged with 11 offences including concealing criminal property and possession of false identity documents.

Leslie Sieff, 61, a former director of the same company, of Ranulf Road, West Hampstead, was charged with one count of having custody or control of a counterfeit currency note.

All three have been bailed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates’ court on September 25.

Mr Sieff and Mr Woolf are both South African Jews who have lived in London since the 1980s.

Mr Sieff is a former treasurer of New London Synagogue, while Mr Woolf was head of the search committee that was given the job of finding a new rabbi for the synagogue after the death of Rabbi Dr Louis Jacobs.