Shop licence revoked over illegal tobacco sales

Trading Standards officers said there had been a history of illegal sales at the shop in Bradford

A corner shop has been stripped of its licence after £11,000 worth of counterfeit tobacco was found in a nearby locked outbuilding.

Bradford Council’s Licensing Panel revoked the licence for The Corner Shop, in Harrogate Road, at a meeting on Thursday, after a review was brought by West Yorkshire Trading Standards.

They said there had been a history of illegal sales at the shop.

David Mullins of Trading Standards said the impact of businesses selling illegal tobacco “caused the local economy to suffer”.

He said: “In the outbuilding we found an iPad linked to the store in question’s CCTV, so anyone in there could monitor the activity in the shop.

“There were no illegal items in the shop itself.

“The business seems to continue to sell illegal tobacco. This impacts on legitimate stores and undermines their business, causes legal businesses to close and the local economy to suffer.”

The panel was told that the owner of the business at the time of the raids, Awat Abdul Karim Mohamed, had since sold the business, but remained the licence holder for the shop.

Members were also told the licence would be transferred to a new licensee shortly.

He claimed he was stepping away from the business and had little involvement with it in recent months.

According to the Local Democracy Reporting Service the business was also given two written warnings in 2022 after counterfeit tobacco was sold during two test purchases at the store.

The test purchases were set up by Trading Standards and involved a person posing as a customer to check it was abiding by the law.

CCTV images of the shop that were linked up to the outbuilding

In the first test purchase, on 20 February of that year, a packet of cigarettes was purchased for £4, when the retail price was £12.

The counterfeit cigarettes were brought into the store by a “runner” who fetched them from an outside area.

A similar test purchase was carried out two days later and this time the runner was intercepted by police.

They found several packets of illegal cigarettes on him, plus a set of keys which gave access to a small outbuilding at the rear of the buildings opposite the store.

The panel was also shown images of the outbuilding, which contained what Trading Standards described as a “substantial quantity of counterfeit/ illicit cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco”.

The total amount seized was 612 packets of cigarettes and 45 pouches of hand rolling tobacco, which had a combined retail price of about £11,000.

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