Gatwick Airport gangmaster jailed for tax fraud
26.04.08
A multi-millionaire Gatwick Airport ‘gangmaster’ who cheated the tax man of up to £4m through a lucrative empire using an army of low-paid immigrants to carry out airport work was jailed for six years yesterday.
Mazher Raja, 50, launched a ‘sustained, carefully-planned and determined fraud’ on the Inland Revenue stretching from at least 1993 to 2001, Southwark Crown Court heard. In a ‘complex’ and sophisticated fraud, Pakistan-born Mr Raja told ‘endless lies’ to inspectors and ‘despicably’ targeted his own community, Judge Geoffrey Rivlin, QC, said.
To escape detection he used various methods to distance himself from many of his phoenix-like firms that appeared, disappeared, and then rose again with a new name. The jury heard that Mr Raja, who mainly supplied labour to clean planes and prepare onboard meals at Gatwick and Heathrow, not only conned workers into thinking their deductions were being made properly but also created fictitious employees to pocket even more.
He tried to conceal as much of his ill-gotten gains as possible by channelling large chunks into accounts controlled by his wife, children and other relatives. However, when investigators moved in they found millions in tax and national insurance contributions missing.
Bruce Houlder QC, prosecuting, said: ‘He didn't simply avoid tax, he evaded it, and to evade tax is to cheat the Revenue and ultimately all of us. At the end of all this he was a rich man.’ The jury unanimously convicted him of 9 counts of cheating the Inland Revenue between February 1, 1998, and April 5, 2001.
The judge told Mr Raja: ‘Umpteen sums of money in terms of PAYE contributions in respect of goodness knows how many workers were not paid as they should have been. In respect to some of the off-the-record companies, no tax was paid at all. You made not just a handsome profit yourself and your family but a veritable fortune.’
Mr Raja, of Hanworth, Middlesex, was sentenced to 6 years' jail to run concurrently on each of the 9 counts of cheating Inland Revenue between February 1998 and April 2001. He also received an 18-month and a 3 year sentence, also to run concurrently, after being found guilty on two charges of false accounting.
The 11-week trial prosecutors put the amount of money stolen at in excess of £4m. Mr Raja's accountant puts it to at least £2m. The judge said the amount owed to the Inland Revenue is ‘in the very least the sum of £2.75m’ and a confiscation hearing will take place at a later date.
His ‘unqualified’ accountant Kandish Sivandaraja, 72, of Great West Road in Hounslow, who also faced the ‘cheating’ charges, was cleared of any wrongdoing after explaining he simply followed orders and ‘never suspected’ anything amiss.
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