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Trucks were hired at £100 a week by sham operation
Page 37
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The five-vehicle licence is revoked and the operator disqualified for three years as a "warning" to others. Mike Jewell reports.
AN INTERNATIONAL operator with a licence for five vehicles and five trailers was revealed to be running a front operation for three other men and had little involvement with the day-to-day processes of his business.
Northampton-based Florian Ciornei, trading as Lorex, did not own the vehicles specified on his 0-licence but appeared to be hiring them for as little as £100 a week. He was called before the Eastern Traffic Commissioner Geoffrey Simms, who revoked his licence and disqualified him from holding or obtaining a licence for three years.
The licence was granted in May 2006 with an operating centre at Pattishalk the nominated maintenance contractor was WS Commercials of Northampton. A maintenance investigation in October revealed that the operating centre and maintenance contractor had been changed without notification. The transport manager, Trevor Lambell, subsequently resigned and was replaced by loan Don Todor.
Ciomeisaid two of the three vehicles specified were hired from Northampton Freight Services, Todor's company. Todor or his company paid the insurance for those two vehicles. All three vehicles were driven by self-employed drivers who were paid in cash.
Co Durham-based haulier Keith Wilson said he was maintaining the vehicles. Ciornei and Todor acted as his subcontractors, visiting his depot in Co Durham as a consequence.
The TC said a hire agreement between Northampton Freight Services, which did not hold a licence, and Ciornei recorded that one vehicle was hired for a monthly rental of £400.There was no mention of a second vehicle. He was not persuaded that it constituted a valid commercial contract and he felt it was more a device created in response to the vehicle examiner's probings. He could not accept that the bone fide hire of a goods vehicle could be obtained for £100 a week. The TC said there was little to link Ciomei with the licence or indeed the operation of goods vehicles at all. In the short period between the grant of the licence and the vehicle examiner's enquiries the operating centre had been abandoned the correspondence address had changed,the nominated maintenance contractor was never used, insufficient finance was available, the transport manager had resigned and another person's vehicles had been used.
TheTC added that this was a bad case where a person had obtained a licence but was almost totally dependent upon Trevor Lambell, Keith Wilson and Don Todor in its use. The order of disqualification would "serve as a warning" to others who might be tempted to lend their name to a licence application whose purpose was for the benefit of others. •