Customs & Excise gets Neame rap
by Ailsa Colquhoun Customs & Excise officials have been described as "unfair and inefficient" by an industry leader after a week in which it faced massive embarrassment over its handling of alcohol and tobacco smuggling. First, the Audit Commission revealed that confiscated alcohol from passengers had been soldon by Customs & Excise sub-contract staff. Meanwhile, a third major fraud trial collapsed, bringing total losses from failed prosecutions to £250m. A further 80 convictions are at jeopardy after evidence emerged in court that customs officers lied, mis-led juries and deceived courts in prosecutions centred on alleged alcohol scams at London City Bond, a bonded warehouse. The failure of the latest prosecution at Kingston Crown Court over a £40m fraud case follows similar cases heard at Liverpool, involving £84m in alleged duty evasion and a £500,000 alleged duty fraud in Glasgow. Trials involving around £117m of alleged fraud also fell through in London earlier in the year. Stuart Neame, vice-chairman of Shepherd Neame, says this highlights the weaknesses in the Customs system. "Customs has the power to close a brewery at a day's notice but to merit such powers, it must have the public's respect to use them wisely and fairly and that's what's lacking," he said. "It uses excessive penalties to cover up for its lack of efficiency and fairness," he added. The Audit Commission revealed that private companies had been employed by customs to help transport and store seized goods. However, no proper system was put in place to track goods as they moved through the system. The Audit Commission claimed to have uncovered evidence of private staff selling the goods on the black market. Neame said: "In my opinion, part of the problem is the time and resources Customs wastes on small-scale bootlegging when it could all be avoided if there was less incentive to smuggle." The British Institute of Innkeeping has claimed that each pubs loses £12,000 a year in profits because of alcohol and tobacco smuggling.
