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No redudion in cigarette smuggler's jail sentence
Page 18
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tst transport manager loses his appeal against a four-year prison sentence for smuggling cigarettes. Cliff Goodwin reports.
N. TRANSPORT MANAGER vho used his haulage company ;ontacts to mastermind the muggling of at least 25 million ;igarettes into Britain has been old he deserves every day of his our-year jail term.
MalcolmNoblewas an executive .t the South Shields' wholesale nd clothes distributor Visage mport when he moved into the muggling racket as a sideline.
Eachconsignmentof contraband igarettes earned him £2,000— but t his 2006 trial Newcastle Crown 7ourt was told each shipment had heated the taxman out of £1.4m. The racket came to an end when crate — part of a consignment jackets being delivered to Leicester warehouse — was ccidentally dropped and broke part, spilling out cigarettes. The onsignment was then searched nd nine million cigarettes were iscovered. Customs officers checked two more Visage containers that had just arrived from Rotterdam. finding another 16 million cigarettes worth nearly £2.5m in lost duty and VAT.
Noble, of West Denton, Newcastle,wasjailed in December 2006 after admitting fraudulently evading the duty on the goods.
Rejecting the claim that his four-year term was "too harsh", the Appeal Court has ruled the original sentence was "not manifestly excessive".
After the hearing. an HM Revenue and Customs spokesman admitted Noble had merely been the figurehead and fixer behind a wider smuggling operation.
IN Some £200,000 worth of cigarettes have been stolen from a Spar stores depot at Willem hall. near Wolverhampton, over an eight-month period.
Birmingham Employment Tribunal panel members watched CCTV footage allegedly showing a former employee and two others acting suspiciously as trucks were being loaded.
The Tribunal heard that Craig Dicken, from Wolverhampton, who helped supervise loading the vehicles, had been sacked for gross misconduct after allegedly being involved in the disappearance of thousands of cigarettes.
Dicken was seeking compensation for unfair dismissal after denying involvement in the thefts; the company opposed his claim.
After watching the CCTV footage, Tribunal panel members said the three men in the film could not be identified because the images were not clear enough.
The hearing was adjourned to enable more evidence to be given.