Massive Europe wide raids to tackle huge VAT fraud

VAT fraudsters , who are extremely successful and resourceful organised criminals steal £400 MN a month from the UK Treasury, more than the combined cost of the illegal Iraqi invasion and occupation force and sending ill equipped,and under resourced soldiers to a certain death in Afghanistan ...

As part of a massive integrated operation,targeting multi million pound VAT fraud, 300 HM Revenue and Customs staff (HMRC) have been deployed across France, Spain, Germany and the UK in the early hours of today.

A total of 50 search warrants were executed at business and domestic addresses in London, Glasgow, the Midlands, Manchester, Dover, Bristol and South Wales. A total of 13 people were arrested in the operation - further arrests are expected.

Whilst organised criminals steal £400Mn a month (at least - no one knows the true figure) HMRC have had some success, in 2005 - 06, there were six successful prosecutions for carousel fraud, resulting in 18 convictions and total prison sentences of 67 years.

A further nine successful prosecutions have concluded since April this year, resulting in 35 convictions and jail sentences totalling 165 years. - there have also been successful proceedings for asset recovery in one case a recovery of £13 Mn , plus a Marbella villa and 3 racehorses, even after the alleged criminal was found inoccent of VAT fraud.

Total assets recovered so far do not exceeed £20 Mn, 2 days take for the fraudsters...each day ... every day... all day.

Assets recovered in Edinburgh

Michael Voudouri, (pic) from Alloa in Clackmannanshire, got 4 years in 2004 after pleading guilty to or operating a major VAT fraud involving £3Mn VAT evasion by three companies he operated. Fairwood Trading and Cortec Management, textile traders and also £20Mn of turnover with - Computer Technics, who acquired computer chips from Denmark, Luxembourg and the Republic of Ireland.

He is now out of prison and at the High Court in Edinburgh, on 28th November, assets of his were seized and he was given 6 months to pay £1.3m, the single biggest seizure under Proceeds of Crime legislation. The proceeds from the sale of a £600,000 Bridge of Allan house will be added to that of other addresses in Alloa and London.

Music industry group involved in mobile phone fraud of £40Mn.

In September 2005 4 people received jail sentences totalling 22 years forma £40MN VAT fraud. In passing sentence, Her Honour Judge Williams said, "It was an audacious and outrageous fraud... all defendants showed a shameless dishonesty."

The highly organised scam, operated over 2 years, involved buying mobile phones from twelve fictitious companies (they were clones of legitimate UK firms, set up in Hong Kong with names and letter-heads identical to British firms dealing legitimately in telephones and computer chips) and using false receipts to charge VAT on the transactions, resulting in a loss to HM Revenue & Customs of more than £40 million. The proceeds from this crime were then sent to the Hong Kong bank accounts of a number of companies created to perpetrate the fraud.

All four defendants faced two charges, Cheating the Public Revenue with intent to defraud, contrary to Common Law and (Money Laundering) Assisting another to retain benefit of criminal conduct contrary to s93A(1) (a) CJA 1988.of cheating the public revenue with intent to defraud, and money laundering.

Musician Stephen Pigott, DOB 27/12/62. A musician/ music producer of Dubai, UAE. Was sentenced to nine years on both counts to run concurrently. His work invloved star names such as Celine Dion, Rod Stewart,The Pet Shop Boys and Mike and the Mechanics and had a string of song-writing awards to his name.

As part of the fraud Pigott had emplyed a trick lifted from the Frederick Forsyth novel The Day of the Jackal, Pigott got a passport in the name of David Roy Chapman after finding the name on a child's gravestone in a churchyard near his birthplace in Yorkshire.

Stacy Haber-Hofberg, DOB 25/01/62 a former environmental judge in New York , who had moved to Liphook, Hampshire with her English husband and their three young children , received six years on each count to run concurrently.(pic) She is also a songwriter, producer (of countless music videos, documentaries, the Off-Broadway play The Man From Verona, and the feature films "Def By Temptation" and "Rockabilly Vampire", the latter two often cited [she insists by design!] as being amongst the worst horror films ever made).

In addition both Pigott and Haber-Hofberg were both disqualified from holding the position of company director for the next fifteen years.

Joanna Harris DOB 24/02/69. A fitness instructor of London SE26. She was sentenced to three and a half years on both counts to run concurrently.

Theresa Igbanugo (38) a record label director of Sydenham, she had a reputation as a very good pioneering music entrepreneur, talent-spotting young acts. London SE26 received three and a half year sentences on each count to run concurrently. Harris and Igbanugo were also both disqualified from being a company director for ten years.

Recovery of assets proceedings are underway.... but ... Mr Big got away , Piggott refused to identify a man he called "Matt" whom he met in a bar ... he is thought now to be in Dubai from where he cannot be extradited. To HMRC he was John Andrew Shaw (code Z111), 52, a businessman and father of two from Sheffield. HNRC had a 67-page dossier on him. Another codename, Mauve 111, is a code given to his former home, a converted farmhouse in a South Yorkshire village.

The dossier identifies a lengthy series of suspicious transactions via banks in Dublin, Hong Kong, Ghana and the Isle of Man, as money was harvested from the HMRC frusdulently and then washed by banks around the world ... who know nothing about the fraud.