An accountant is one of three men to have been jailed in the UK for a total of 19 years after they conspired to steal almost £7 million in UK taxes to fund a lavish lifestyle that helped them buy properties in Turkey and the US and fund trips to Dubai and the Monaco Grand Prix.
Chris Gill, assistant director of HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, said: “These men were driven by greed, abusing systems that are designed to ensure workers are paid correctly and taxes paid to HMRC.
“They were all professionals who knew they were breaking the law, but as an accountant Aquil Ahmed was in a position of trust, making his part in the conspiracy even more deplorable.
“These criminals thought they’d created a sophisticated fraud, and that by operating through numerous UK and offshore companies, they could hide what they were doing.
“But our investigations are thorough, and with assistance from authorities in Gibraltar, we unravelled the many layers they’d created and they are now paying the price for their crimes.
“This investigation shows that regardless of the resources of those involved, or how hard they try to hide their crime, no one is beyond our reach. Tax evasion isn’t victimless, it is theft from public services used by us all.”
Sentencing the men, Judge Macdonald QC, said the “loss to HMRC is just another way of stealing from citizens of the UK,” adding, that the men “took millions to spend on themselves.”