A self-styled clothing tycoon who sold counterfeit socks and pants while operating an extensive fraud ring will have all his UK assets seized after the Crown Prosecution Service won a court order to confiscate up to £90m worth of property and luxury cars.
Arif Patel, 57, from Preston, Lancashire, who has been on the run since 2011, will have homes and business premises he owned taken from him after a confiscation order granted by a judge at Chester crown court on Thursday.
His Ferrari 575 Superamerica will be sold at auction, as will property in Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.
Patel masterminded a gang that was convicted in 2023 of one of the UK’s biggest VAT tax frauds in HMRC’s history.
In a sequence of trades known as carousel fraud, he moved goods between different companies, creating false export and import records that he used to claim back large sums from the tax authorities.
Soon after the fraud was uncovered, Patel absconded to Dubai, where it is understood he has been ever since.
Carousel fraud has netted criminals hundreds of millions of pounds in VAT fraud over recent decades and led to concerns about HMRC’s ability to protect from abuse the main tax on the sale of goods and services.
There are also likely to be concerns about the length of time it has taken to secure the convictions, which resulted in a group of VAT fraudsters being tried in their absence, and the confiscation order, which has taken a further two years.
During the trial, investigators showed how Patel’s operation stole millions of pounds through VAT repayment claims on false exports of textiles and mobile phones.
Patel’s gang also imported and sold counterfeit clothes that would have been worth at least £50m had they been genuine.
He has now been ordered to pay back £90.5m with the sale of his properties in Preston, London and overseas.
Patel and his co-accused, Mohamed Jaffar Ali, 61, of Dubai, were found guilty in their absence of fraud and money laundering offences after a 14-week trial in 2023.
They were sentenced in their absence to a total of 31 years in prison. The UK does have a formal extradition treaty with Dubai but legal commentators say it is not effective.
Twenty-four other people were convicted during five trials between 2011 and 2014, and a total of 116 years and seven months’ imprisonment handed down.
The convictions followed a joint investigation between HM Revenue and Customs and Lancashire police, which also secured jail sentences totalling more than 116 years for 24 other gang members.
Richard Las, director of the fraud investigation service at HMRC, said: “Arif Patel lived a lavish lifestyle at the expense of the law-abiding majority but he will now lose the property empire he amassed from the proceeds of crime.
“Our work never stops at conviction. For the last two years we’ve worked with police and CPS partners to secure one of the biggest criminal confiscations we’ve ever recovered.
“Tens of millions of pounds of stolen money will now go back to directly to fund public services.”
