A convenience store which sold illegal cigarettes that left a smoker in hospital has had its alcohol licence suspended for up to three months.
Leeming Lane Stores, on Leeming Lane in Mansfield, has been ordered to remove all its alcohol from sale and from the sight of customers immediately after the decision was made by Mansfield District Council’s licensing panel at a meeting on Monday, 20 April.
The illegal cigarettes were discovered after a woman from Lincolnshire rang Nottinghamshire County Council’s Trading Standards team in January this year.
The woman’s daughter had fallen ill after smoking a Winston Blue-branded pack of cigarettes bought from Leeming Lane Stores and had been hospitalised.
The licensing panel was told that the woman would have known the cigarettes were illegal due to them costing only £5, and that if she knew, it was likely known in the wider community that fake goods were on sale at the store.
A legitimate packet of cigarettes costs £12–£15 on the UK market.
The mother of the hospitalised woman then sent the packet of illegal cigarettes in the post to Trading Standards.
As part of the investigation, officers subsequently visited the store to make an undercover ‘test purchase’ and were sold a packet of the illegal cigarettes, again for £5.
The team then returned to the shop at a later date with the authority to conduct a search and seized nearly 5,000 cigarettes in 244 packets from a ‘fake shelf’, as well as five packets of rolling tobacco.
The goods were worth £3,810 – a value calculated by what the packs would have been sold for if they were legitimate, due to the loss involved for the genuine brands.
The items were then sent to the respective manufacturers that the packets were imitating, including Winston, Marlboro, and Lambert & Butler, to test their legitimacy.
Checks confirmed that most of the cigarettes were counterfeit, which the Trading Standards officer present at the meeting explained meant they had been manufactured “in Eastern Europe in unsanitary conditions, using unknown ingredients and manufacturing techniques”.
The cigarettes that the woman had smoked also contained mould, tests showed, although it was not clear what type of mould.
Mr Masood Karimi, the shop’s owner, licence holder, and designated premises supervisor (DPS), who is responsible for the licence and takes legal responsibility for what happens in the shop, was present at the licensing meeting.
He explained that, at the time the illegal cigarettes were discovered, he was only present at the shop for around half a day or one day per week and had left its operation in the hands of other staff due to personal issues at home in Rotherham.
He told the panel that a member of staff had taken it upon himself to stock the illegal cigarettes in an attempt to “increase sales because the shop was quiet”.
Mr Karimi said the man was fired immediately and would not work at the shop again, adding that he, as owner, had taken things ‘very seriously’ since the visit from Trading Standards, as “it’s not something to mess about with”.
He added: “I don’t know if you guys have had a long-distance relationship, but this was too far from me to get there every day. It is very hard to control something that is not close to you. I can apologise and assure you it will never happen again.”
He maintained he had ‘no idea’ about the activity.
Council licensing officer Michelle Williams said that if Mr Karimi was not confident that he could manage the staff or was concerned they did not know the law, or what was or was not allowed, he should have asked the council to appoint a different DPS.
The panel questioned whether Mr Karimi would have known about the fake shelf due to being involved with the regular rearrangement of the shop’s layout.
He denied knowing of the shelf, saying: “It never crossed my mind. You might think I should’ve known. I understand from your point of view that you might think I’m lying or something, but I didn’t know.
“If I know, the illegal activity is not worth it. How much money could I bring in extra as a result? For how much we could lose, it’s not worth the hassle.”
After deliberating for a short time, the panel returned with its decision.
Licensing committee chair, Councillor John Coxhead, told Mr Karimi that staff should be continuously trained, saying: “It is vitally important that people are aware they cannot sell counterfeit cigarettes.”
It was also noted that this was the shop’s first involvement with Trading Standards.
Illegal cigarettes come in two forms – counterfeit, as described above, and those which are legitimate but have no legal market in the UK.
These are distinct from duty-free cigarettes, which can be brought into the country from abroad.
Both counterfeit cigarettes and those illegal to sell in the UK have no duty paid on them, meaning the UK Treasury is affected.
Standard tobacco duty on a 20-pack of cigarettes is 16.5 per cent of the pack’s retail value plus £6.69, meaning the government should be paid around £9.29 for every packet sold.
The illegal cigarette market also affects other small businesses trading legitimately, which cannot compete with the illegal market.
The production and sale of such products are usually arranged by organised crime gangs, the meeting was told.
Counterfeit cigarettes tend to cost £4–£5 for a 20-pack, while those which are legitimate but not for UK sale cost around £6–£7.
The minimum a pack of cigarettes can be sold for legally in the UK is £7.87.
Guidance for local councils on licensing matters such as this one outlines that powers of review are to be used “in the interests of the wider community and not that of the individual licence or certificate holder”, whilst the financial circumstances of the licence or certificate holder will be a consideration.
The council itself does not have the power to prosecute a store owner, only to affect the terms of its licence.
Its role, therefore, guidance states, is “not to establish guilt or innocence of any individual but to ensure the promotion of the crime prevention objective”.
It is uncommon for complete revocation of a licence to occur immediately in the first instance of Trading Standards involvement, but it “may be considered appropriate” in some circumstances, such as if the premises has sold alcohol to minors.
Guidance does state, however, that certain criminal activity on licensed premises, such as “the sale or storage of smuggled tobacco and alcohol”, should be treated ‘particularly seriously’.
