Fraudster who built ‘palace’ is freed – but still owes state £3m
Notorious £450,000 tax scammer still living in luxury in Birmingham
AN infamous Birmingham tax fraudster who built a ‘palace’ in Pakistan has been freed from jail – despite still owing £3 million in crime proceeds and interest.
And Mohammed Suleman Khan, nicknamed ‘The General’, is understood to be still living in the same £700,000 gated house in Moseley he lived in when he was jailed.
He was originally sentenced to four years in 2014 after defrauding the taxman of £450,000.
The scam was exposed after police raided his Moseley home and found plans for his own ‘Buckingham Palace’ in Pakistan, complete with library, cinema and servant quarters.
In 2016 Khan’s sentence was increased by ten years when he failed to pay a £2,209,090 confiscation order.
Five years later he is now a free man again, having been released after serving half his default sentence.
He still has not paid a penny of the £2.2 million order – nor the additional £1 million interest – owed to the state.
It is believed Khan is still living in the Moseley house which belongs to relatives. The property is subject to a financial restraint order which was obtained by the CPS, according to Land Registry records.
In non payment cases eight per cent interest is added annually to the original sum meaning Khan now owes another £1 million on top, taking the total outstanding to £3,221,034.
West Midlands Police said in a statement: “POCA (Proceeds of Crime Act) Asset Recovery is often extremely complex and time consuming. Our progress to date has been slower than we would like in this case.
“It is the obligation of Mr Khan to pay the confiscation order and remains so, despite having served the default sentence. There are a number of significant complications surrounding the recovery of the Birmingham assets. We have however, acted on intelligence from the community and we conducted a warrant at the house in Moseley on 30 May. No weapons were found.”
The statement added the Crown Prosecution Service and the force “fought strongly to get this confiscation order, we continue to work together as we remain fully committed to enforcing it and getting back what we can as soon as possible.
“Our work continues, however, much of it has to remain in the background for now.
“We appreciate this is frustrating for people who want to understand more, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t doing anything.”
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said: “I can confirm that on April 10, 2015 Birmingham Crown Court made a confiscation order for £2,209,090 against Mohammed Suleman Khan. The court gave him six months to pay the order and fixed a period of imprisonment of 10 years in default of payment of the confiscation order.
“On February 4, 2016 Birmingham Magistrates’ Court activated the default sentence of 10 years to run consecutive to the period of four years imprisonment for the offence of ‘Cheating the Revenue’.”
The CPS would not release any information about steps taken to try to recover the outstanding monies.
The original tax fraud court case heard Khan had lived in a gated £500,000 house in Moseley and drove a BMW, but had no obvious job.
His family home belonged to relatives 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 from West Midlands Police 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.
A search of Khan’s Birmingham home after his arrest uncovered plans for the ‘palace’ in the Attock region of Pakistan.
The outer shell and roof of the building had been completed by Khan at a cost of £893,000.
Once finished, the property would have been valued at £2.3 million.
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.
His honour Judge Menary QC had presided over the original case and agreed Khan was living beyond legitimate means, the most obvious evidence of that being his Pakistan property.
He said: “It is enormous with dozens of rooms, a library, servant quarter, cinema, underground parking and guard rooms.
“It is the size of Buckingham Palace.”