Money cleaning aka money laundering, account for a lot of those nail bars/small 'independent' Jewelers/internet cafe's and most other shops you see spring up with hardly any customers
We have a couple of places around here where that’s happening.
one place was a car show room albeit quite a small place. Just three walls and a frontage that could be opened right up. You could get maybe five cars max in the showroom and another five outside. The guy went bust and it stood empty for a couple of years.
Someone then came along and turned it into a plush looking coffee bar that looked pretty ok.
The only thing was that the cliental using it were mostly not local and the majority of them were slightly gangster looking in the sense that they looked a bit rough and ready and didn’t seem to hold down regular hours in a job anywhere and yet, they could afford the prices the coffee bar charged.
Oh and it quickly became common knowledge that the new owners were Albanian.
There was also at least one gun being held on the premises. This was verified by a trustworthy source and was reported to the police on the QT. There has been at least one major fight in the place when a large group of people turned up and it instantly went viral with the punchup spilling out onto the street pavement.
The same people have now brought a local pub that was on it’s last legs and trade there seems to be picking up with a crowd of people similar in appearances to those using the coffee bar propping up the bar and sitting around the tables.
The price of the beer etc has shot up as well despite the pub appearing ready to call it a day just a couple of months ago. The new clientele obviously have money to spend in what is a mediocre setting because unlike the coffee bar up the road, very little money has been spent on the pub.
The local word is that it’s money laundering. I’m told that the Albanians are quite big in East London in drugs etc and they need somewhere to clean the proceeds.
I understandably haven’t a clue what the police are doing but presumably they have an eye on the place because I know for a fact that the gun on the premises was reported to the police intelligence organisation some time ago now.