Ruth Wambui Mungai-Azeez

A Kenyan care home assistant who led a life of luxury by allegedly helping her husband launder the profits of a Sh700 million mortgage fraud is facing a long jail term in Britain.

Ruth Wambui Mungai-Azeez, 26, denied the charges when she appeared before the Southwark Crown Court in Central London.

She was charged with acquisition, use of criminal proceeds and with assisting another person to retain the benefit of crime.

Mrs Azeez is said to have lived in a six-bedroom house with 12 plasma televisions and drove a Bentley and Land Rover.

She took holidays in Dubai and the south of France, kept Sh220 million in her bank accounts and blew huge sums at expensive bars and restaurants. But her life was funded by crime, Southwark crown court heard.

Her Nigerian husband Victor Ayinde-Azeez is alleged to have led a mortgage fraud gang which plundered nearly Sh700 million from high street banks in six weeks.

He 'bought' 22 houses around the South-East and, with his accomplices, applied for mortgages from high street lenders.

When Mrs Azeez was arrested, she was about to leave the country after her husband texted her a warning that the police were on their way. He is believed to be abroad.

The Kenyan national was told by Judge Martin Beddoe: "It seems to me that I'm going to have to pass on you a significant sentence, without credit for a guilty plea."

She was denied bail and remanded at a North London women prison waiting sentencing later this month.