The former owners of London club East Village were this week jailed for a combined 18 years, for conspiring to run brothels and launder the profits.

The club, which was located on Shoreditch’s Great Eastern St and housed nights such as Night Slugs, closed in Summer 2013. Although the promotions and music team stated that this was unexpected, it soon emerged that the Metropolitan Police had asked Hackney council to review the club’s licence on the grounds of it being “associated with serious crime”, with “a joint op between the Money Laundering Team and Licensing Unit [leading] to the arrest of two men connected to East Village nightclub for an offence under the Proceeds of Crime Act.”

In a report in yesterday’s Evening Standard, it’s claimed that East Village was at the heart of a £12 million money laundering operation linked to brothels across London. The club was struggling commercially, and its former owners, Ashley Sheldrick and Terrence Hart, were subsidising it through funds raised by prostitution.

Sheldrick and Hart, according to the Met Police, “used bogus hospitality companies to send chip and pin machines to seven brothels across Camden and Westminster, taking a cut of the profits”, and scammed punters by amounts of up to £10,000 in the process.

Sheldrick was jailed for eight years after admitting conspiracy to manage a brothel and conspiracy to convert, transfer or remove the proceeds of crime, while Hart, Brighton, received 10 years after being found guilty of the same charges. Two others received five and three year sentences after being convinced of similar charges.