Court orders seizure of counterfeit underwear seller’s £90m assets | HMRC

A self-styled clothes tycoon who offered counterfeit socks and pants whereas working an intensive fraud ring may have all his UK property seized after the Crown Prosecution Service received a courtroom order to confiscate as much as £90m price of property and luxurious vehicles.Arif Patel, 57, from Preston, Lancashire, who has been on the run since 2011, may have houses and enterprise premises he owned taken from him after a confiscation order granted by a decide at Chester crown courtroom on Thursday.His Ferrari 575 Superamerica will probably be offered at public sale, as will property in Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.Patel masterminded a gang that was convicted in 2023 of one of many UK’s greatest VAT tax frauds in HMRC’s historical past.In a sequence of trades often known as carousel fraud, he moved items between completely different corporations, creating false export and import information that he used to assert again giant sums from the tax authorities.Quickly after the fraud was uncovered, Patel absconded to Dubai, the place it’s understood he has been ever since.Carousel fraud has netted criminals lots of of thousands and thousands of kilos in VAT fraud over latest many years and led to issues about HMRC’s capability to guard from abuse the principle tax on the sale of products and providers.There are additionally more likely to be issues in regards to the size of time it has taken to safe the convictions, which resulted in a bunch of VAT fraudsters being tried of their absence, and the confiscation order, which has taken an extra two years.Throughout the trial, investigators confirmed how Patel’s operation stole thousands and thousands of kilos by means of VAT reimbursement claims on false exports of textiles and cellphones.Arif Patel’s seized Ferrari. {Photograph}: HMRC Press OfficePatel’s gang additionally imported and offered counterfeit garments that may have been price not less than £50m had they been real.He has now been ordered to pay again £90.5m with the sale of his properties in Preston, London and abroad.Patel and his co-accused, Mohamed Jaffar Ali, 61, of Dubai, have been discovered responsible of their absence of fraud and cash laundering offences after a 14-week trial in 2023.They have been sentenced of their absence to a complete of 31 years in jail. The UK does have a proper extradition treaty with Dubai however authorized commentators say it isn’t efficient.skip previous publication promotionSign as much as Enterprise TodayGet set for the working day – we’ll level you to all of the enterprise information and evaluation you want each morningPrivacy Discover: Newsletters could include data about charities, on-line advertisements, and content material funded by outdoors events. For extra data see our Privateness Coverage. We use Google reCaptcha to guard our web site and the Google Privateness Coverage and Phrases of Service apply.after publication promotionTwenty-four different individuals have been convicted throughout 5 trials between 2011 and 2014, and a complete of 116 years and 7 months’ imprisonment handed down.Mohamed Jaffar Ali was discovered responsible alongside Arif Patel. {Photograph}: HMRC Press OfficeThe convictions adopted a joint investigation between HM Income and Customs and Lancashire police, which additionally secured jail sentences totalling greater than 116 years for twenty-four different gang members.Richard Las, director of the fraud investigation service at HMRC, mentioned: “Arif Patel lived a lavish life-style on the expense of the law-abiding majority however he’ll now lose the property empire he amassed from the proceeds of crime.“Our work by no means stops at conviction. For the final two years we’ve labored with police and CPS companions to safe one of many greatest prison confiscations we’ve ever recovered.“Tens of thousands and thousands of kilos of stolen cash will now return to on to fund public providers.”