A MASSIVE international smuggling scam has been foiled by customs officers who uncovered more than seven million cigarettes stashed in a village near Evesham.
The five-strong gang were also planning to ship another eight million into the country - depriving the Crown of more than £2m in duty, Worcester Crown Court heard.
In August, 1999, customs officers at Felixstowe found 7,450,000 contraband cigarettes stashed behind boxes of rubber hoses in a Greek container.
Massive haul
Papers showed the massive haul was destined for JW Morley Potato Suppliers at Hood Lane Farm, Ansley, Warwickshire.
The lorry was allowed to carry on, but under surveillance, and customs officers caught Matthew Kitely, Paul Elam and Andrew Lillis unloading the stash at Badgers Hill, Sheriff's Lench, Evesham.
A second container en route to the same farm was picked up by Spanish customs officers at Algeciras. Almost 7.7m cigarettes had been packed into it. Three months later, customs intercepted a German-registered lorry delivering tomato puree at Nightingale Farm, Bentley, Atherstone, and again found 29-year-old Kitely, Elam and Lillis, 32, unloading the cans. Forty-one-year-old Mark Williams was helping them.
Two hundred thousand cigarettes were recovered. It was then Danilo Legrottaglie and Swiss-born Stefano Ratti were spotted leaving the farm.
Kitely, of Stretton Avenue, Coventry, Lillis, of Lower Eastern Green Lane, Coventry, and Barry Parr, 50, of Crampers Field, Coventry - who had helped organise the scam - were all convicted fraudulent evasion of VAT and excise duty after a trial at Worcester.Co-defendants, Elam, of Cleaver Gardens, Weddington, Northampton, and 36-year-old Ratti, of Lugano, Switzerland, were also convicted.
Four others - 35-year-old Alan Keast, of Elizabeth Drive, Leafields, Tamworth, Legrottaglie, 28, of Hopner Close, Leicester, James Morely, 29, of Hood Lane Farm, Ansley, and Williams, of Churchill Avenue, Foleshill, Coventry, were cleared.
"This is an excellent result," said Mark Powell, for Customs & Excise.
"This was a smuggling gang with international links which thought they had a foolproof method of defrauding the taxpayer."
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