Fraudsters jailed over £50 million alcohol duty scam (From News Shopper)

Fraudsters jailed over £50 million alcohol duty scam

11:47am Monday 13th February 2012 in News By Jim Palmer

A CRIMINAL gang has been jailed for a total of 20 years in one of the biggest-ever alcohol smuggling frauds uncovered in the UK.

The scam, worth £50 million a year in unpaid duty and VAT, allowed the fraudsters to live a lavish lifestyle of fast cars and luxury houses throughout Europe.

Davinder Singh Dhaliwal, of Langdale Gardens, Dartford, was right hand man to ringleader 49-year-old Kevin Ramon Burrage, of Ravendale Way in Shoeburyness.

The gang bought duty-free beer and spirits from France bound for Promptstock Ltd - a bonded warehouse in Essex owned by Burrage and managed by his 55-year-old brother-in-law Gary Dennis Clarke.

The booze was then illegally diverted around the UK with no duty paid.

In one instance, a lorry was diverted to Hayes in Middlesex for distribution around the UK.

Dhaliwal was observed supervising the offloading of Vodka into an industrial unit.

The gang also appeared to be sending trucks with non-duty-paid alcohol to France, but the booze remained in the UK and trucks were sent to the continent empty.

Customs officers found 30,472 litres of this alcohol, with a duty value of £21,626 in Leicester.

Michael Brian Turner, aged 52, from Folkestone provided a seemingly legitimate cover for the movements of the alcohol through his firm Keytrades (Europe) Ltd.

The four were arrested in dawn raids by HMRC officers in November 2008.

At Canterbury Crown Court on Friday (February 11), Burrage was sentenced to 10 years in prison and disqualified from being director of a company for 12 years.

Clarke, of Maplin Way North in Thorpe Bay, was jailed for six years and nine months in prison.

Both were found guilty of conspiracy to cheat the public revenue in January following a three-month trial.

Dhaliwal, aged 32, was sentenced to 16 months in prison and Turner to three years and two months after they pleaded guilty to cheating the public revenue and fraudulent evasion of excise duty at an earlier hearing.

Specialist fraud prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, George Barbary said the convictions were a ‘significant breakthrough’ into a crime that costs the country upto £1bn a year.

Mr Barbary said: "What seemed like a bonanza for these criminals was in fact a tax fraud on such a grand scale that it probably resulted in a loss to the taxpayer of £50 million a year - quite possibly more."