afrol News, 1 July - A Nigerian barrister has been jailed for five years for attempting to cheat Britain £17.5 million through a fraudulent VAT claim and a bogus £100 million aircraft engine deal.

John Wilmot, who worked in Temple Chambers, said he paid more than £100 million for the sale of four Boeing 747 engines in south London before selling them to an Iraqi businessman.

Southwark Crown Court has convicted the 35-year-old of cheating the public revenue.

"This was an audacious attempt to obtain a very large sum of public money," said Judge Deborah Taylor while handing down judgment.

The Nigerian national would be deported upon completing his sentence and disqualified as a company director for eight years.

His claims that he was not knowingly involved in the attempted fraud were rejected by the court.

Britain's assistant director of criminal investigation directorate, Robert Gray, wondered why a barrister who is in a "position of knowledge and trust had chosen to abuse his privileged position to mount an extremely serious attack on the VAT system."

He said the "massive fraud" would have succeeded were it not for HM Revenue & customs's (HMRC) "rigorous checking of VAT repayment claims."

The man who claimed to be a barrister specialising in shipping, aviation insurance and international law, was arrested following an investigation triggered by his first VAT Return as a repayment claim for over £17.5 million.

Customs staff, who raised concerns about discrepancies on Wilmot's VAT returns, asked him to explain. He said the massive repayment claim was necessitated by the purchase of jet engines from a UK company, Aircraft Unit Engineering Ltd, which were later sold to an Iraqi businessman. Wilmot also claimed the engines were shipped on the Heroi Strakhorskyi, from Southampton on 12 December 2006 for the port of Umm Quasr, Iraq.

He had provided paperwork for sales and shipping, but his inability to prove any bank accounts on the payment of the engines boomeranged on him. Besides, enquiries proved that the VAT number on the invoice from Aircraft Unit Engineering Ltd, which does not exist, was a redundant VAT number belonging to the Argos Catalogue company.

A search of the manufacturer's website for the jet engines also proved Wilmot wrong that each engine was valued £4.8 million, far above the barrister's claims that he had sold each at £25 million.

A search into his Temple Chambers in London uncovered a laptop computer which he had used in the creation of purchase and sales invoices, export documents and contracts.

He claimed to have bought the engines from a company called Croydon, but this was also disputed by the company whose officials said they had neither heard of him, nor sell aircraft engines. Despite gathering all these evidences against him, the Nigerian barrister maintained his innocence throughout the trial.

By staff writer

© afrol News

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