From: Evening Standard
A millionaire tobacco smuggler who made his fortune by bringing illicit cigarettes into Britain to a London warehouse has handed £4.5 million back to taxpayers to avoid going back to jail.
Robert Doran, 51, who had an expensive flat in Dubai, drove sports cars and flew first-class, was jailed for four and a half years for conspiring to evade excise duty. He had been bankrolling a gang that smuggled 20 million cigarettes in containers supposedly full of toys.
He was originally ordered to repay £1.45 million of criminal profits but had his confiscation order tripled to almost £4.4 million by the Court of Appeal after a failed attempt to use human rights laws to hold on to his profits. He made a further effort to dodge repayment by going to the Supreme Court but has now paid the entire sum, plus interest, after selling land in Kent he had bought with his criminal profits.
