‘Ghost lorries’ that are ‘snuck’ through the Channel Tunnel reportedly cost the British government 1.2 billion per year Pic: Alicia G. Monedero / Shutterstock
The UK has allegedly missed out on 40 billion in customs charges for alcohol over three decades, due to criminal gangs and insufficient border searches in France, it has emerged.
A court in Lille sentenced 40 perpetrators to jail time, house arrest, and 4 million of fines earlier this year, in connection with excise fraud.
The criminals were found to have engineered the payment of excise duty - a tax on beer, wine and spirits - at Dunkirk customs in France, rather than paying across the Channel in the UK as they should have done (as the drinks would go on to be sold in the UK).
Excise duty for imported spirits in the UK can be up to 50 times higher than that due in France.
Courts have only just become aware of the scale of the crime, which has been going on for several decades across Europe, largely perpetrated by mafia gangs.
And yet, the taxes collected in France have benefited the government’s coffers, as the Dunkirk regional customs office collected billions in taxes to which it was actually not entitled. British tax authorities are now thought to have missed out on up to 40 billion over 30 years.
The crime is said to go back to the creation of the Single...
A video circulating online, which EuroVerify estimates has been viewed over 10 million times on X alone, claims Bellingcat confirmed their purported "revelations" using satellite imagery that show...