Fraudsters ‘milked £1million from EU fund that promotes migrant integration’
A GANG of fraudsters conned officials into handing over £1 million from an EU aid fund by claiming they were helping immigrants learn English, a court heard yesterday.
Mohammed Chaudhari, 37, his sister Suraiya Alam, 43, and Victoria Sherrey, 66, are accused of milking Home Office schemes meant to promote ‘social, cultural, and economic integration’ for migrants settling in the UK.
The trio raked in cash from EU grants available for those coming to the UK from Third World nations by submitting fake invoices for their English courses entitled ‘Communities Welcome’ and ‘Integrating Communities’, it is alleged.
Southwark Crown Court heard how officials at the Home Office between 2010 and 2015 – when Theresa May was Home Secretary – blindly paid out the grants without carrying out proper checks to determine whether they were genuine. It was claimed they ‘didn’t have the resources to really closely scrutinise every document’.
By the time the alleged scam was uncovered when a whistleblower tipped off the authorities, the gang had stolen £1.13 million in EU funds, jurors were told. Prosecutor Edmund Vickers, QC, said the EU Integration Fund was a ‘soft’ target for the gang who were ‘cynically taking advantage of the relative ease of granting funding’.
He said: ‘ These three defendants fraudulently obtained over £1.13 million in EU funds allocated to the businesses which they were running. They did so by applying for grants from the Home Office. The funds were part of the EU Integration Fund – in other words, public money.’
Jurors heard that the gang submitted phoney applications from their two Birmingham-based businesses – Inspire Futures and Accent on Training – for venue hire and wages for projects entitled ‘ Integrating Communities’ and ‘ Communities Welcome’, which the defendants claim helped immigrants learn English.
Astonishingly, civil servants carried out no checks to see whether the applications were fake, despite the large sums of taxpayers’ money being doled out.
Mr Vickers added: ‘ Unfortunately, the Home Office didn’t have the resources to really closely scrutinise every document that was sent in. And so the evidence that the Home Office was asking for, when it came in – if it purported to show where the money was going – that document would be accepted by the Home Office.’
He claimed they made convincing applications by ‘providing false documents that appeared to be genuine and when audited by the Home Office they gave the appearance that the money was being properly spent’.
‘They were designed, the prosecution say, to mislead the Home Office civil servant overseeing the account into thinking that the money was being appropriately spent,’ he said.
‘A lot, if not the majority, of that spending wasn’t going where it was meant to be going.’ The alleged racket was discovered only when staff at the firms tipped off the Home Office that the funds were not being used properly.
Investigators discovered that Chaudhari, who was chief executive of Inspire Futures Ltd, had been providing false documents for the project called ‘Integrating Communities’ which was said to help migrants to improve their English language skills, it was alleged. At the same time, he was working as a director along with Sherrey with Accent on Training, which ran a similar scheme called ‘ Communities Welcome’, the court heard.
Alam’s role in the alleged fraud was to gave the Home Office ‘independent assurance that the projects were using the funds appropriately’ – despite being employed by both firms.
For four years blundering officials were unaware of Alam’s links to the others, even though a simple check would have revealed that she was Chaudhari’s sister.
Mr Vickers said: ‘Evidence that the Home Office took on trust was one of the ways that allowed the defendants to carry out the fraud successfully for so long.
‘The defendants’ luck ran out when staff working at the compa- nies discovered that their businesses were not being honest and informed the Home Office that all was not as it seemed. That led the Home Office, who had by that stage already had a number of concerns about the defendants’ business practices, to investigate the matter and then hand the evidence over to the police, who investigated the fraud further.’
Prosecutors accept the trio had run legitimate projects through their businesses before 2010.
Chaudhari and Alam, from Birmingham, and Sherrey, from Kidderminster, each deny four counts of conspiracy to commit fraud. Chaudhari also denies eight further counts of fraud.
The trial continues.
‘Cynically taking advantage’ ‘No checks were carried out’