A former Oldham businessman has been banned from being a director of a company for 12 years after carrying out sales connected to a tax fraud committed by customers.

Yasar Hussain, of Schofield Street, Oldham, carried out 20 sales of silver to a Cypriot customer when he was a director at Blu Tech Limited, a company that dealt in the wholesale of metals and metal ores formerly based at Falcon Business Centre in Chadderton.

According to The Insolvency Service, the Cypriot customer however denied purchasing any goods from, or having any contact with Blu Tech.

The service also found that the Cypriot customer had been deregistered for VAT since September 18, 2019.

Despite this Blu Tech continued to make zero rated sales, meaning no VAT was paid, using the deregistered VAT number between May 24, 2019 and October 30, 2019.

Blu Tech did not see the goods involved in the transactions and no inspection of the goods took place at any point.

HMRC identified that the silver transactions were part of a tax fraud committed by Blu Tech’s customers.

On June 17, 2020 HMRC issued a letter to Blu Tech denying the zero rating on dispatches of silver to the Cypriot company resulting in a total £1,046,441.68 in tax being owed.

The previous year on September 18, 2019, HMRC officers visited Blu Tech and gave Mr Hussain information on how to spot missing trader VAT fraud. Missing trader fraud involves a ‘missing’ trader who deliberately fails to pay VAT on taxable supplies made in the UK.

A month later HMRC issued a letter to Blu Tech warning that it may be at risk of involvement in supply chains that are connected to fraud.

Officers from HMRC had also issued several due diligence notices to Mr Hussain in his previous companies going back to 2013.

The service found Mr Hussain failed to carry out due diligence, despite the trading that Blue Tech was involved having “many common features of the fraudulent evasion of VAT” and him being aware of the prevalence of fraud in the sector.

Due diligence check documents were not provided to HMRC to show that Blue Tech had conducted any credit checks on its trading partners.

On March 6, 2020, Blu Tech was deregistered for VAT with immediate effect because HMRC believed the company was using its VAT registration solely or principally for fraudulent purposes.

In October Mr Hussain 2020 resigned as director of Blu Tech and the company has gone into liquidation, according to Companies House.