The Army Rumour Service

Quote:

Corrupt lawyer jailed for sham marriage scam

Crown court report Thursday, February 21, 2013
6.00 AM

A CORRUPT lawyer from Brookmans Park who ran one of Britain’s biggest ever ‘brides to order’ scams has been jailed for 10 years.

Tevfick Souleiman, of George’s Wood Road, was told by an Old Bailey judge his £20m enterprise drove “a coach and horses through the immigration rules”.

Souleiman, 39, made millions of pounds by providing fake tenancy agreements and other false documents to support the marriage applications.

The father-of-two, who headed London law firm Souleiman GA, was found guilty of conspiring to breach immigration law and fraud.

Three other men, Zafer Altinbas, Cenk Guclu and Farruh Kosimov were also jailed for their part in the scam.

At an Old Bailey hearing on Monday, Judge John Bevan QC told them: “A heavy responsibility for upholding the rule of law rests with lawyers.

“If the public cannot trust the integrity of lawyers, who can they trust?

“Souleiman GA have betrayed that trust by driving a coach and horses through the immigration rules.”

Souleiman was jailed for ten years, while Guclu and Kosimov both received nine-year prison terms.

[ unfortunately Mr Kosimov has skipped bail and is currently unobtainable for comment in his native Uzbekistan....]

Altinbas, who used his windfall from the scam to buy a Bentley with personalised numberplates, received a sentence of six years and nine months because of his guilty plea.

The judge said the conspiracy would place a burden on UK taxpayers for years to come.

He added: “It represents an attack on the institution of marriage itself, treating it as a paper exercise involving two people who cannot understand a word the other is saying and meeting, for all intents and purposes, on their wedding day.”

Defending Souleiman, whose wife works for the Crime Prosecution Service, Mark Harries said his client had been left a “broken man”. (Huzza)

His firm is set to fold and he faces being struck off as a solicitor. (Huzza)

Souleiman and Guclu also admitted a £75,000 tax fraud, which involved paying wages to ‘phantom employees’ for seven years, after they were told they would receive no additional jail time.

Police began investigating the firm in 2009, and found it was charging up to £14,000 for each sham marriage.

After the hearing, Detective Superintendent Caroline Barker, from the Met Police Central Task Force said: “This firm was corrupt to the core; the individuals involved knowingly and fraudulently sought to get rich by setting up thousands of sham marriages so that people could stay in the UK illegally, and then going on to defraud HMRC by faking payments to non-existent employees.”