A shopkeeper who was jailed for selling counterfeit versions of big-brand cigarette such as Lambert & Butler, Marlboro, and Benson & Hedges has been ordered to pay more than £10,000 in prosecution costs. Yarech Kader was taking around £300 a day in cash from the illicit trade in tobacco until his scam was busted by trading standards officers.
Kader repeatedly failed to turn up at Swansea Crown Court to be sentenced and was “at large” for a significant period of time until he was arrested on a warrant in the English East Midlands and remanded into custody. Sending the defendant down in his absence – Kader refused to leave his cell for the hearing and didn’t instruct a barrister to act for him – a judge said his repeated non-attendance at court had been a “deliberate attempt to delay or evade justice”.
In September this year father-of-three Kader was sentenced to two years in prison for running an illegal cigarette operation from the Asia Market store on Swansea’s St Helen’s Road. Following a series of test purchases carried out at the shop trading standards officers found a stash of illicit tobacco products in a hidden shelving unit in the rear of the premises.
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The case returned to court this month for an application for costs from the prosecution. Barrister Rebecca Griffiths told the court the case had been listed eight times for sentencing and she asked the court to make a costs order in the sum of £10,419. Judge Huw Rees said given the Kader’s non-compliance with the sentencing exercise “it is inevitable costs would be higher”. The judge made the order in the sum requested. Kader, who appeared via videolink from prison but was not legally represented, said he would not able to pay the money while he was in custody, and judge Rees told him he would not have pay until he was released. The judge also ordered the confiscation of 272 packets of cigarettes seized during the council’s enforcement operation. For the latest court reports, sign up to our crime newsletter here
The original sentencing hearing was told that Yarech Mahmud Kader, of Maynell Street, New Normanton, Derby, has a “plethora” of convictions involving unlawful tobacco. In May 2015 at Gloucestershire Magistrates’ Court the defendant pleaded guilty to 21 offences of supplying and possessing for supply unlawful tobacco and was fined £19,000. Then in January 2016 he was convicted in Sheffield Magistrates’ Court of possessing counterfeit tobacco for which he was fined £110, and in January 2018 he was convicted at Nottinghamshire Magistrates’ Court of eight offences of possessing counterfeit tobacco and distributing a dangerous product and was sentenced to 12 weeks in prison suspended.
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