Ex-wife of millionaire crime boss Arif Patel loses appeal staking claim to fraudster's assets

The ex-wife of millionaire fraudster Arif Patel has had her own appeal case shot down in court, after falsely claiming she had partial ownership of assets due to be sold off to pay his £90 million debt.

Arif Patel, 59, formerly of Sharoe Green Lane, Preston, will pay back £90,503,211.96 after half a decade of tax fraud and fake product imports between 2003 and 3008.

The sock maker-turned-crime boss tried to steal £97 million from the public purse through his Preston-based company Faisaltex Ltd, which he ran with his brothers Munaf and Faisal Patel.

The three carried out a series of ‘carousel frauds’, moving exports of clothing and electronics in and out of the country to claim false VAT repayments.

At the same time, they began importing millions of pounds' worth of fake designer clothing into the UK, and spent between £6 million and £7 million on fake charity donations to accomplices in India to avoid paying nearly £200K in tax.

Despite being found guilty, Munaf, Faisal, and later Arif himself would go on the run to Dubai. Arif was given a 20 year prison sentence, but has not even served a single day.

Last year, Arif was told that he would need to repay £90.5 million as a result of his crimes, which would come from selling off his assets - including his properties dotted around Preston.

His appeal to lower the amount he owed was rejected last week, as was an appeal by his former wife, Sabina Patel.

Sabina married Arif in 1985, and divorced him in 2016 - five years after he fled the country.

In a written statement to police in 2008, she claimed she was a housewife with “no knowledge” of any of Arif’s crimes, nor of any dealings involving Faisaltex Ltd.

But despite that, when court proceedings to seize Arif’s properties under the Proceeds of Crime Act came into force, she submitted a claim to say she had a “significant beneficial interest” in many of the properties due to be sold off.

Having a ‘beneficial interest’ in a property means that you receive a share of the money if it is sold, even if you are not the legal owner. If you have a 25 per cent beneficial interest in a house, for example, you will receive 25 per cent of the proceeds if it is sold off.

She said she had a 50 per cent beneficial interest in 5 and 6 Cheapside, Preston, which was the sole asset of Faisaltex’s pension scheme, as well as a 25 per cent beneficial interest in the Faisaltex offices on 107-109 Fletcher Road, Preston.

She also said she had a 50 per cent beneficial interest in the assets held by Faisaltex, as well as a 50 per cent beneficial interest in her and Arif’s former home on Sharoe Green.

In Sabina’s case, the court estimated that if what she claimed was true, she would be owed up to £12 million by the time the properties and assets were seized by the court - money which they feared she would give right back to Arif.

The court said they saw no issue in Sabina having “some interest” in the company’s assets. Their main concern was how and why she had the interests in the first place if she claimed she had no involvement in the company.

Further concern arose when Sabina refused to give any evidence to assist her case. Of this, the judge said: “I am sure that she did not want to give evidence because she could not have faced up to cross-examination about the hard detail which was missing from her written statement in these proceedings.

“I am quite sure that she would not have been able to give any evidence as to how she apparently came into ownership of these beneficial interests.”

The company’s address on Fletcher Road was registered in Sabina’s name, alongside Arif’s mother Bibi, his brother Faisal, and Faisal’s wife, who was unnamed in court documents.

But when Bibi, Faisal, and Faisal’s wife were issued notices about the court seizures, none of them claimed any interest in Fletcher Road at all.

And when it came to Cheapside, the court ruled that Sabina had no stake in the property at all, and that documents signed between her and Arif had been done as a “sham”.

The courts ruled that Sabina had no beneficial interest in any of the properties or assets except for the family home on Sharoe Green.

Sabina’s appeal last week disputed this. She also added she felt the judge had drawn an “adverse inference” from her not giving evidence.

However, her appeal was dismissed: the court held that Sabina was not entitled to any share of proceeds from the sales of Arif’s assets except from those related to the family home.

The judge said that it was “common practice for [Arif] Patel to use the names of family members on documents in relation to matters in which those family members had no interest”, and that he had used Sabina’s named to remove assets from the court’s confiscation order.

Regarding her claim the judge had made “adverse inference” about her lack of evidence, the court said the judge had made no legal errors relating to her case.

“Sabina Patel and indeed the wives of Munaf and Faisal Patel, together with Mr Patel’s mother Bibi, would never have been allowed to actually own or control any part of the Faisal group or its properties,” the appeal ruling said.

“A number of the companies were set up with nominal directorships given by Mr Patel or, separately, his brother Munaf and separately, his brother Faisal, with their respective wives as co-shareholders. Other than for fraudulent reasons there was no logical or legitimate reason to set up a series of different companies.

“Mr Patel, as well as being a cunning and dishonest man, was a conceited and self-important individual who did not have a clear grasp of company law, but who wanted to appear important in his own community and wanted to be seen as head of a large group of companies – purely for his own self-gratification and self-importance.”