Greenhalgh, 68, was found guilty in June of ten counts of involvement in the unlicensed supply of weapons, including AK‑47 rifles, battle tanks and hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammunition, between 2009 and 2016. Farmakis, 48, was convicted of nine similar offences, although he was tried in absentia and his current whereabouts remain unknown.
Judge Sally‑Ann Hales, presiding at Southwark Crown Court, said the pair repeatedly sought to breach UK arms‑export bans in pursuit of “significant profits”, and imposed identical 16‑year sentences on both men.
Prosecutors highlighted that only one charge involved the actual transfer of weaponry: the sale of a former Ukrainian S‑125 Pechora surface‑to‑air missile system to South Sudan. At the time of the deal, South Sudan was still a semi‑autonomous region of Sudan and subject to a British arms embargo, prosecutor Edmund Burge told the jury.
The defendants also arranged to supply fighter jets to Libya during its civil war and pursued arms shipments to Iran, Iraq and Syria, all in violation of international embargoes. The Libyan deal was uncovered after an email sent from Farmakis’s work account at the government‑funded Greater London Enterprise was forwarded to his supervisor, prompting investigators to seize documents outlining the proposed sales.
Greenhalgh and Farmakis are accused of leveraging close connections with senior figures in the targeted regimes to facilitate the illicit transactions. Their convictions underscore the UK’s intensified enforcement of arms‑export controls in conflict zones.