VAT fraudsters who made £39m in just 69 days jailed

Three cheats who conned taxpayers out of £39million in just 69 days through a complex VAT scam have been jailed for a total of 35 years. Mastermind Sandeep Singh Dosanjh, 30, blew proceeds from the racket on a Rolls-Royce and a £1million home in Bayswater, West London.

 Dosanjh and his two lieutenants Ranjot Singh Chahal, 35, and Navdeep Singh Gill, 31, imported high-value carbon credits, which allow firms carbon dioxide emissions, free of VAT into the UK. They then sold on the credits and charged VAT which they kept instead of paying to the tax man.

 The importing companies were then dissolved. The trades were made in minutes via computer and the stolen VAT laundered through offshore bank accounts before the gang spent it. Dosanjh was jailed for 15 years, Gill for 11 and Chahal for nine after a 14-week trial at Southwark crown court. Judge Peter Testar said of Dosanjh: “He made a significant profit, enough to buy a £1million house in Bayswater and a Rolls-Royce.

 "The total loss to the public purse was £39million or 41million euros, that was the amount that was lost or stolen. "During the 69 days of the trading there were huge sums of money involved. "The total turnover was of 276million euros, of which 41million euros was due in VAT. "One invoice alone returned to your company was for 8million euros.” Prosecutor Michael Parroy QC described the fraud as a “blatant and dishonest cheat on the public purse by a group of people in an organised and systematic fraud on the VAT system”. He said: “The loss of tax revenue ran into millions of pounds.

 Some of them made staggering amounts and all of it was made cheating the tax payers. “Money that should have paid for hospitals and schools was diverted into the pockets of a group of dishonest people.” Chahal, of Southall, West London; Dosanjh, of Kensington, West London; and Gill, of Slough, Berkshire, were found guilty to conspiracy to cheat the public revenue between September 2008 and July 2009. 

 Four other alleged gang members; Dhanvinder Singh Basra, 26, Sandeep Harry, 27, Pritpal Singh, 32, and Kernjit Gill Dhillon, 30, were cleared of the same charge.