scheme

The suspect used "friendly relations with the president of Ukraine" in his criminal activity, the prosecutor added during a pre-trial hearing for another man accused of involvement in the scheme.

They had the essential feature of a Ponzi scheme: To maintain the fiction that they were profitable enterprises, they needed more and more capital to create more and more subprime loans.

But shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said "the confusion created by Labour's botched early release scheme", which was brought in to ease prison overcrowding, was partly to blame.

But UK police believe this was an elaborate scam, and that Qian's company was simply using promises of high profits to pull more and more investors into the scheme.

The paper says Reeves is expected to limit the amount that workers can put into their pensions under "salary sacrifice" schemes without paying National Insurance to £2,000.