Carousel fraudster ordered to repay £3.8 million

ONE OF the West Midlands most notorious ‘carousel fraudsters’ has been ordered to repay £3.8 million of criminal profits or return to prison for a further seven and a half years for his part in a £54 million complex ‘missing trader’ VAT fraud.

Jaswant Raykanda, from Little Aston, Sutton Coldfield, was sentenced to four and a half years in 2006 following a six-year investigation by HM Revenue & Customs. It involved two separate criminal trials and the conviction of seven men and one woman sentenced to a total of 40 years.

The conspirators ran their multi-million pound fraud using the mobile phone industry. Raykanda and his accomplices built a complex network of transactions across the UK, Luxembourg and France, and then broke the chain of due VAT payments when various companies set up as part of the scam went ‘missing’.

These companies were set up by Emmanuel Henning in the West Midlands, Lancashire and the Isle of Man. Henning was jailed for 15 years – the longest sentence of its kind ever handed down in the UK.

Richard Meadows, Assistant Director of Criminal Investigation for HMRC, said:

“This was organised fraud on a massive scale perpetrated by criminals intent on making huge profits at the expense of the British taxpayer. ‘Missing trader’ fraud is not merely a paper fraud but often features links to other forms of criminal activity. This case is a further example of our determination and success in bringing to justice the criminals behind this type of fraud and taking away the proceeds of their crime.”

Assets restrained from Raykanda include:

• A house with a swimming pool in Beechgate, Little Aston, Birmingham, valued at around £1.5 million
• Commercial property at Jubilee House, Wheeleys Road, Birmingham, valued at around £985,000
• Three top of the range sports cars – a Mercedes CL55, a BMW X5 and a Lexus GC300, all with personalised number plates
• Investments in Switzerland and Jersey

His lavish lifestyle enabled him to educate his children privately, purchase expensive watches, two properties in Spain and his Beechgate home was decorated by interior designers.