Crimelord built own ‘Buckingham Palace’
MOHAMMED Suleman Khan was originally sentenced to four years in April 2013 after defrauding the taxman of £450,000.
The nine-year scam was exposed after police raided his Moseley home and discovered plans for his own ‘Buckingham Palace’ in Pakistan, complete with library, cinema and servant quarters.
Serving inmate Khan, 43, faced a proceeds of crime hearing last April and was ordered to pay £2,209,090 or face a further ten years’ jail.
The original tax fraud court case heard he had lived in a gated £500,000 house and drove a BMW, but had no obvious job and only small amounts of money went through his bank accounts.
Yet, while he was careful to avoid showing trappings of wealth in the UK, detectives discovered he had secretly paid for the £2.3 million mansion to be built in Pakistan.
In court, his defence portrayed him as a legitimate businessman who had earned around £400,000 over the nine-year period from debt collecting and other business interests in the UK and abroad.
But police found no evidence of a legitimate debt collecting company and their investigation proved he had netted over £1 million during that period, without paying the required tax and National Insurance.
Khan did not utter a word during his police interview or court appearances, aside from “guilty” when he admitted cheating the public revenue during an appearance at Birmingham Crown Court in November 2013.
He was known in criminal circles as ‘The General’ and Big Sully and was viewed as untouchable.