CAUGHT WITH 100,00 SMUGGLED CIGARETTES

BORDER FORCES FOUND SMUGGLED CIGARETTES WORTH £36,904 IN UNPAID DUTY

A WEST Drayton man has been jailed after he and another man were caught trying to smuggle more than 100,000 cigarettes into the UK.

Rashid Said Ramadan, 38, and Mohammed Adnan Ali, 33, attempted to smuggle the cigarettes, worth £36,904 in unpaid duty, in four suitcases, holding two each.

The pair were stopped at Manchester Airport on December 5 last year after flying from Erbil in Iraq, via Qatar and Heathrow Airport.

Border Force officers found the cigarettes in their suitcases, and an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) revealed they had tried to smuggle 105,239 cigarettes in total.

Ramadan, of Peartree Avenue in West Drayton, and Ali, of Wincheap, Canterbury admitted knowing what was in the suitcases to HMRC investigators.

Ali said they were paid £1,000 by a man they met at a café in Iraq to smuggle the cigarettes, and that another man was to collect the cigarettes at Manchester Airport.

Both men pleaded guilty to fraudulent evasion of excise duty, and were were sentenced at Manchester Crown Court on Friday January 4.

Ramadan was jailed for eight months and Ali was jailed for 10 months.

After the sentencing, a spokesman for HMRC said: “It is clear that Ramadan and Ali were couriers working for an organised crime gang. They have travelled from the Middle East solely to make money from smuggling cigarettes, but instead they are behind bars.

“Tobacco smuggling steals money from the public purse. The duty evaded in this case is equivalent to funding two kidney transplants on the NHS.

“I urge anyone with information about VAT fraud to contact us online or call our Fraud Hotline on 0800 788 887.”