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Customs launches major campaign on fuel fraud...
Page 6
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2 by Jennifer Ball
Customs & Excise is planning a major crackdown on diesel rackets in a bid to slash the use of illegal diesel. Its aim is to cut fuel fraud by half, to just 2% of the market by Mardi 2006—this crime is estimated to have cost the Exchequer £450m in 2000.
As part of the campaign Customs & Excise will spend more on testing. It will be making greater use of its officers throughout the country, with more specialist testing officers deployed to detect and stop large-scale commercial frauds, as well as more intelligence officers on the ground to help deter illegal fuel use.
Fuel launderers will face a number of other barriers including; More extensive use of specialist investigators to break up criminal gangs and laundering plants; A new central intelligence unit, designed to make enforcement activities as effective and hard-hitting as possible; More research into the latest marking technologies, which make it harder to disguise the use of rebated fuels.
Next April a regulatory scheme for anyone dealing legally in red diesel or paraffin will be Introduced, and these businesses will have to be authorised by Customs. They will also be required to provide details of all their customers and the amount of fuel they have bought.
John Healey, Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Customs Minister. says; "Illegal diesel is a danger to the honest driver whose engine is wrecked by it; to the revenues which could fund new hospitals and schools; to honest businesses which find their livelihoods threatened by cowboy operators; to the countryside which has toxic water dumped in it; and to us all as criminal gangs fund their activities and lifestyles through these rackets.
"The government won't tolerate these dangers, and has put in place action which will cut this problem," he adds.
freight Transport Association chief executive Richard Turner has welcomed the clampdown. He points out that truck operators using illegal fuel are not only robbing the government; they are also conducting Illegal competition against the enormous majority of honest operators who are paying for, and using legal, duty-paid diesel.
'And the chances are that if they are cheating on fuel then they are cheating on other matters—drivers' hours, vehicle maintenance and much more," he adds.