LONDON: An air stewardess who smuggled shisha tobacco into the UK from Dubai, evading more than £57,000 in excise duty, has been jailed.
Jade Kaur, 27, from Brompton Road, Stretford, was caught with 25kg of non-UK duty paid shisha tobacco and 3,200 cigarettes in her luggage when stopped by HM Revenue and Customs Border Force officers at Manchester Airport last November.
An investigation uncovered messages on her mobile phone that proved she had carried out at least a dozen similar long-haul trips while off duty. Kaur owned up to illegally bringing 275kg of shisha into the UK between July 2014 and November last year while flying in on staff-discounted tickets from Dubai, where she was based at the time, to Manchester.
At Manchester Crown Court, she pleaded guilty to three counts of fraudulent evasion of excise duty and was jailed for 18 months. The total duty evaded on the 275kg of shisha tobacco and 3,200 mixed-brand cigarettes was £57,202.
Sandra Smith, assistant director of HMRC’s Fraud Investigation Service, said: “As an air stewardess, Kaur knew exactly what she was doing was illegal, yet kept on going for months purely to line her own pockets. But now the game is up and she is paying the highest price by losing her freedom, not to mention her career.”
