Derby Telegraph

Shopkeeper sold News illegal cigarettes hidden in secret compartmen­ts

HE WAS CAUGHT DOING IT AT TWO STORES AND HAS BEEN IN COURT FOR DOING IT BEFORE

- By MARTIN NAYLOR martin.naylor@reachplc.com

A DERBY shopkeeper sold illegal cigarettes which he kept in secret compartmen­ts he created at his two city shops.

Derby Crown Court heard how Ismail Amin was caught out during three different visits by trading standards officers.

When they went to Star European Mini-Market, in Pear Tree Road, they found more than 200 packets of illicit or counterfei­t cigarettes along with hand-rolling tobaccos.

Much of the stock did not have health warnings.

Then, on two separate spot checks at Smart News, in Chellaston Road, more of the same was found.

And Amin, a 50-year-old father-offour, has been caught carrying out the same offences on two separate occasions at previous shops he owned in Staffordsh­ire and Nottingham.

Handing him an eight-month jail sentence, suspended for 18 months, Recorder Martin Butterwort­h said: “The sale of such products is a serious offence because they have passed no quality or safety checks.

“For commercial gain, you stocked two shop premises with these sorts of products which are ingested and therefore cause, or are likely to cause, harm to those individual­s that buy them. You built shelving specifical­ly to hide such tobacco products and employed people to sell them for you, I am sure.

“You were selling poisonous products and the people who buy them are addicted and buy such products which can contain unknown components.”

Alex Barbour, prosecutin­g on behalf of Derby City Council, said officers went to the Star Mini-Market in June 2018 and found 222 counterfei­t packets of cigarettes along with hand-rolling tobacco.

He said they then went to Star News in June and September the following year and found more of the same type of items.

Mr Barbour said: “Illegal tobacco trade undermines the reduction of smoking, affects the trade of legitimate retailers and also impacts the Government and public financiall­y through unpaid VAT.

“It poses a risk to public health, he made attempts to conceal the products in containers and there was a lack of health warnings.”

Amin, of Reeves Road, Pear Tree, denied any wrongdoing, but was found guilty following a trial of a number of offences relating to selling and possessing illicit and counterfei­t cigarettes and rolling tobacco.

Raglan Ashton, mitigating, said his client fled Iraq in 2004 after being tortured by the Saddam Hussein regime to start a new life with his family.

He said Amin’s wife died from cancer in 2018 which left him to bring up their four daughters, aged 13, 12, 11 and seven.

Mr Ashton said: “Immediate incarcerat­ion for him would have a devastatin­g impact on his family.”

As part of the suspended sentence Amin was ordered to carry out 180 hours of unpaid work and attend 10 rehabilita­tion sessions with the probation service.

He was also handed a four-month electronic­ally-monitored curfew confining him to his home address each evening between 7pm and 7am.

The total loss from Amin’s offending, including unpaid VAT, was calculated at just over £4,300.

 ??  ?? Ismail Amin
Ismail Amin

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