Walker Cup star faces 10 years in jail

Duncan Evans won the British Amateur Championship in 1980 and represented GB & Ire against USA in the Walker Cup. A year earlier he was named BBC Sports Personality Of The Year for Wales.

Yesterday he was arrested and faces up to 10 years  in prison after he was found guilty of pocketing £20million as a gangland money launderer. The 58 year old was arrested after completing 18 holes on the Algarve.

UK authorities want Evans extradited to serve a ten-year sentence for failing to pay the money back he made from crime. It is believed that he fled Britain and moved to Portugal while his appeal against that sentence was ongoing.

Evans was living in a flat in Almancil on the Algarve, where he played golf regularly. He had also set up a number of companies including an import-export and construction business.

A source at the Portuguese Judicial Police said: 'He has been playing a lot of golf and even won a few tournaments. Plain-clothes officers arrested him after he came off a course following a round.'

Evans has previous in the fraud game. Somewhere along the way, he turned to a life of crime, and in 1999, he began laundering millions of pounds for notorious villain 'Riviera' Ray Woolley, spending the cash on a number of multi-million pound properties and a £195,000 Rolls Royce.

The homes included an eight-bedroom country house in Lymm, Cheshire, called Deans Green Hall, which he bought for £1.5million.

Evans playing the 1981 Open Championship at Royal St Georges, Kent

Evans was convicted of money-laundering offences following a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in 2003 and was jailed for three years and ordered to pay £3million. The complicated scam – known as a 'Missing Trader Inter Community Fraud' – which cheated the taxman out of £38million, saw Woolley get nine years and a bill of £9.5million.

The gang bought goods from other countries then illegally claimed back millions of pounds of VAT that they had not paid.

In August 2009 Evans was jailed again, this time getting four years at Manchester Crown Court having been convicted of three further counts of money laundering following a ten-week trial.

Prosecutors traced the assets he made from his criminal lifestyle and in 2015 judge Robert Atherton at Manchester Crown Court ordered Evans to pay £20million within six months or face ten years in prison. He attempted to appeal that ruling at the Court of Appeal - claiming his right to a hearing within a reasonable time had been breached. But judges threw out his case and proceeded with the prosecution.

A panel of three Court of Appeal judges wrote in their June 2016 judgment: "On any view, and certainly in Judge Atherton's judgment, the applicant is a devious and accomplished fraudster prepared to manipulate events to his own and his associates' advantage."

Portuguese police said in a statement: "In compliance with a European arrest warrant, the Judicial Police located and detained a 58-year-old man for alleged tax fraud and money-laundering crimes.

"The suspect was located in the Almancil area in the course of investigations with the collaboration with the British police."

Evans's 1981 Walker Cup appearance featured one victorious foursomes match and a halved singles match with future US Open winner Corey Pavin.

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