Beer smugglers jailed for £4.2m alcohol duty scam

Two fraudsters who led a Polish beer smuggling scam have been jailed for a total of seven years.

Radoslaw Dobron, 36, and Ilona Leszczynska, 37, smuggled 122 lorry loads of beer that they had not paid UK tax on through a north London-based alcohol wholesaler.

The beer, worth more than £3.1m in evaded duty, was smuggled to Top Seller Ltd by abusing a commercial importers scheme.

The Polish branded beer, including Tyskie, Lech, Perla and Zubbr, was then sold in ‘off-book’ sales to retailers. An estimated £4.2m made in profit was then laundered.

Officers from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) arrested company director Dobron and office manager Leszczynska in Essex in February 2018.

Dobron admitted cheating the public revenue, money laundering and VAT fraud in July 2022, and was jailed for three years and eight months.

Leszcynska was convicted of cheating the public revenue and VAT fraud following a four-week trial at Chelmsford Crown Court that finished in June 2023. She was jailed today (26 July) for three years and four months.

Carmine di Franco, assistant director in HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, said: “Smuggling millions of cans of cheap beer gave them an unfair advantage over the law-abiding majority and deprived our vital public services of funds.

“Disrupting the criminal trade is at the heart of our strategy to clamp down on the illicit alcohol market which costs the UK around £1b per year.”

In a separate case, HMRC said three men who were jailed in 2021 for using a fake alcohol business to launder millions of pounds through shell companies had been ordered to pay back £2.7m or face an extra 15 years in prison.

HMRC said anyone with information about people or businesses involved in the sale, storage or smuggling of illicit alcohol could contact its hotline on 0800 788 887.