Smugglers had evaded 110m
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• Two men who masterminded a major alcohol-smuggling operation have been convicted of evading £10m of duty. Last week; at the end of a 64-day trial, Mohammed Tahir and Chulan Abbas were found guilty. Abbas was also convicted of evading a further £3m of VAT. A third member of the gang, Fida Paseo!, had previously pleaded guilty.
Timothy Hooten, the man alleged to have hired the forklift that unloaded vans and arranged for a truck to deliver the goods to various cash-and-carry outlets, was acquitted.
During the trial at Maidstone Crown Court the jury heard that the smuggling operation had been on a massive scale. Teams of drivers were dispatched across the Channel in vans to collect the alcohol: at one stage 40 vans a day were repeatedly crossing the Channel and delivering the contraband to an industrial estate off the M20 in Kent.
The operation was so large that each driver was given a raffle ticket to denote the load. It even had a significant number of vehicles confiscated by Customs officers, but "such was the huge scale of this commercial operation that the organisers could afford to lose the loads while continuing to make vast profits", said Anthony Glass QC, prosecuting.
All three men were remanded in custody for sentencing on 2 March.