UK Customs - success in their war on VAT carousel fraud

The French Connection

UK citizen Mark Selby (39) ran Maple Link France (SARL) in the period May to May 2003/4. £326.5 Mn. (!) was credited to Mr Selby's company account , as payment for telephones sold to twelve UK companies and to Spanish traders who in turn supplied the same 12 UK companies.

These UK companies then failed to pay the VAT due to HMRC resulting in the theft of VAT ( and money from the taxpayer) of approximately £57 million.

Selby was extradited from France in November 2004 and pleaded guilty on Friday 16th June 2006 at the Royal Courts of Justice and sentenced to 5 years for cheating the Revenue, 6 months for money laundering offences and 6 months each for 5 cases of contempt of court to run concurrently but consecutive to the other sentences .. a total of 6 years.

The Weybridge Three

Alexander Bell (4 1/2 years) and his brother Jonathan ( 2 years) of Walton-on-Thames, and John Palmer ( 3 years) of Weybridge, were imprisoned this week (Nov 16th), and banned from holding company directorships for their part in a £3.7 Mn VAT carousel fraud.

As well as running carousel fraud, the men were trading in pirated copies of Microsoft products.

HM Revenue and Customs raided Alexander Bell's offices during a the carousel investigation and found hundreds of counterfeit Microsoft disks and certificates and only missed prosecution by Microsoft because HMRC got their first.

The four Virgini's

Durgesh Mehta, 51, was a director of Virgini Ltd, of Chalfont St Peter a company he operated in 2003 with ;

Gerald Reardon, 55, of Molash, near Canterbury
Matthew Sharman, 43, of Langdon Hills, Essex.
Peter Ratcliff, 54, of Ashtead, Surrey.

They ran the company to apparently trade in the sale and export of mobile phones to Kiev in the Ukraine.

Virgini Ltd, claimed £10m in VAT payments during that period.Customs uncovered the fraud when it intercepted just under £1m in cash being delivered to two of the gang and found that VAT of over £10Mn pounds had been stolen.They were variously found guilty at Canterbury Crown Court on October 26th 2006 of cheating the public revenue, and conspiracy to transfer criminal property under the Proceeds of Crime Act.

Mehta got 10 years and the others 8 years each and all were forbidden to become Company Direrctors for 10 years.