Booze fraud man jailed
Date published: 03 October 2011
‘Minder’ helped gang evade £1.8m alcohol duty
AN Oldham man worked as a “minder” for a gang jailed for a total of 19 years for selling illicit alcohol in a £1.8 million fraud.
Nadim Iqbal (38), of Netherfield Close, was jailed for 21 months for working as the “muscle” for the crooks who evaded duty on booze supplied to local retailers.
A HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) investigation discovered that spirits, beer and wine were taken from bonded warehouses throughout the UK and then illegally diverted from their intended destination — usually Europe — to be sold in the North-West without duty being paid.
Iqbal was one of six men charged with conspiring to evade UK duty between January, 2007, and January, 2008.
He pleaded guilty in July before the start of a trial but his role can only be revealed now after the mastermind behind the fraud, Paramjit Bagri (45), from Holywell, North Wales, was jailed for five-and-a-half years at Manchester Crown Court on Friday.
Iqbal helped oversee the storage of the diverted consignments and was described in court as “no stranger to dishonesty or violence”.
He was linked to at least two seizures of alcohol but his early plea was taken into consideration for sentencing.
Significant seizures of diverted alcohol — involving hundreds of thousands of litres — were made in Rochdale, Bolton, Merseyside, Walsall, Dover, Stockton upon Tees and Birtley.
Confiscation proceedings are now under way to claw back cash, which could be more than the £1.8 million as other tax evasion and criminal benefits could be involved.
Bagri was a co-director of Warrington-based MF Beers and Minerals, a company involved in the wholesale distribution of alcohol that has now ceased trading.
Separately, he pleaded guilty to a charge concerning the attempted illegal importation of nine million cigarettes in December, 2007, and was sentenced to three-and-a-half years, to run concurrently.
Richard Gerrard Ellis (48), a former landlord of Chorlton pub Southern Public House, who transported the booze, and Mohammed Tariq (47), from Scotland, who deliberately diverted the alcohol to the illegal network, were jailed for five years each after being found guilty.
Mohammed Vaqas (28), of Derby Street, Rochdale, was sentenced to 51 weeks in jail suspended for 12 months plus 180 hours unpaid community work, and Baldeep Singh Tahkar, from Cleveland, an off-licence owner who sold some of the booze, was jailed for 16 months after both men admitted their guilt.
Sentencing the men, Judge Steiger said: “This was an ingenious and complex fraud and I am satisfied that Bagri was top of the tree”.
Mike O’Grady, assistant director of criminal investigation for HMRC, said: “These men diverted large numbers of consignments of alcohol from their intended legitimate destinations thereby avoiding paying UK duty and taxes. It was a very calculated attempt to defraud the Crown and to personally profit from the illegal trade.
“HMRC is committed to protecting public finances from attacks by organised crime. We would ask anyone with information relating to this type of crime to contact the Customs Hotline on 0800-59 5000 and help us stamp it out. Remember if you are offered cheap alcohol or cigarettes you could be financing criminals like this.”
