Nothingham.co.uk desde el Reino Unido. 5 de noviembre de 2012

Cigarette gang leader caught in Poland and jailed for two years

By Rebecca Sherdley


ONE of the leaders of a gang who helped set up an illegal tobacco factory in Notts – capable of producing millions of cigarettes – has been jailed.

Dutchman Marius Klein was the last member of a ten-man gang involved in a £131m tax fraud to be sentenced.



Polish authorities enforced a European arrest warrant and captured 57-year-old Klein, of Lubomierz, Poland, and ordered his extradition to the UK.

Yesterday, he was sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court to two years and six months.

He had earlier pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to produce cigarettes and hand-rolling tobacco.

Passing sentence, Judge Jonathan Teare said: "Your and other gang members' expectations were to make a very great deal of money – in fact millions."

The fraud was foiled when HM Revenue and Customs criminal investigators closed down the fully-equipped cigarette factory before it went into production in October 2009.

From his base in Poland, Klein organised the manufacture, production and sale of counterfeit cigarettes. He also arranged the supply and delivery of counterfeit packaging and provided foreign engineers to install and service machinery at factories in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, and Laxton, near Newark. Klein also tried to arrange the purchase of leaf tobacco to be supplied to the UK.

HMRC had already seized 1.25 million cigarettes from the gang in two operations. The first was in June 2009, when one million cigarettes were seized in Rainworth; the second was in August 2009, when 250,000 were found at Sherwood Business Park, Nottingham.

The gang had conspired to escalate from trading these illegal cigarettes and tobacco to manufacturing their own counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco on an industrial scale.

In co-ordinated searches at three industrial units in October 2009, investigators seized:

Chesterfield – packaging for 43 million cigarettes, cigarette paper, foil cellophane, glue and cardboard inners for packets of 20 cigarettes.

Blidworth – cigarette manufacturing equipment destined for another criminal gang, capable of producing 750 million cigarettes a year with an annual duty revenue loss of over £141 million, 5,000 litres of 96 per cent proof alcohol in a lorry just before it was delivered to the gang's warehouse. This was enough to produce 25,000 bottles of spirits such as vodka or whisky, with a revenue loss of £109,000.

Forensic analysis showed the alcohol was unfit for human consumption.

Laxton – a five-tonne tobacco-cutting machine to make counterfeit hand-rolling tobacco and cigarettes, and 100,000 counterfeit Golden Virginia pouches.

After the hearing, Gary Lampon, Assistant Director of Criminal Investigation for HMRC, said: "The scale of this fraud was staggering. Klein had a key role in the conspiracy to launch a UK production facility, manufacturing counterfeit tobacco goods by the million. The gang's ambition to progress from importing counterfeit cigarettes to manufacturing them on an industrial scale shows a determined ruthlessness to line their own pockets."

Tomado de;

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Cigarette-gang-leader-caught-Poland-jailed-years/story-17223076-detail/story.html