Umerji, R v
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE TREACY
- MR JUSTICE KING
- MR JUSTICE TURNER
Areas of Law
- Criminal Law and Procedure
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
The appellants, Allad, and Umerji, were convicted in their absence for a large-scale VAT 'carousel' fraud. They were connected to companies at the heart of a conspiracy causing a loss of approximately £30 million to public revenue. Both were sentenced to 12 years imprisonment and disqualified from directorships for 10 years. They appealed against their convictions, arguing that their trial was unfair due to their absence and ineffective representation. The court found procedural irregularities and issues with the trial's fairness, specifically with inadmissible opinion evidence presented by a key witness. Consequently, their convictions were quashed, and a retrial was ordered.
Judgment
Lord Justice Treacy:
Introduction
These are appeals against conviction, focusing largely on the issue of the absence of the two appellants from the trial in the Crown Court. There are, in addition, in the case of Allad, a number of other grounds which have been referred to the court by the Single Judge.
On 9 th June 2011 in the Crown Court at Liverpool the appellants were convicted in their absence of (1) conspiracy to cheat the public revenue and (2) conspiracy to transfer criminal property. In each case a sentence of 12 years imprisonment was imposed on Count 1, with 5 years concurrent on Count 2. In addition, each man was disqualified for 10 years under Section 2 of the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986.
There were three other co-conspirators on the indictment. Each of them pleaded guilty prior to trial. Sajid Patel, Umerji’s brother, was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment. Wai Fong Yeung was sentenced to 2½ years imprisonment; and Mohammed Mehtajee was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment.
It is not necessary to go into a great deal of detail about the offences. The fraud alleged was that type of VAT fraud known as a carousel fraud or an MTIC fraud. The allegation was that between 1 st September 2005 and 30 th June 2006 mobile phones were imported from the European Union, VAT free, to a UK VAT registered company. Those phones were then purportedly traded within the UK (where VAT should have been charged and paid on the different transactions) through a series of companies on paper only. The telephones were then exported back to the European Union whereupon dishonest claims for VAT refunds were made. The importer in each case disappeared without accounting for the VAT, thereby causing loss to the revenue in the sum of approximately £30 million.
The conspiracy itself was, inter alia, evidenced by virtue of the guilty pleas of the co-accused. Most of the evidence called at the trial was documentary. The Crown’s case was that there were 307 transaction chains involving the phones, in each of which there was a number of different missing traders. The Crown concentrated on four businesses as providing a sample of transactions to demonstrate the workings of the conspiracy.
Allad was a director of Eurosabre and resigned on 31 st December 2005. Umerji took up a position as director on 1 st January 2006, but was said to have been involved in the running of the company for some time previously. During the year ending April 2006 the company