No money recovered under fugitive fraudster’s £90m order, BBC reports

More than a year after Arif Patel was ordered to pay £90.5m, no money has been recovered under his confiscation order, according to a BBC File on 4 investigation. Patel remains in Dubai and has not served any of the 20-year prison sentence imposed after he was convicted in his absence in 2023.

Patel, a former clothing manufacturer from Preston, was convicted of offences including false accounting, conspiracy to cheat the public revenue and money laundering. HM Revenue & Customs says he travelled to Dubai in July 2011 and did not return. The BBC reports that attempts to extradite him have failed.

The Crown Prosecution Service says Patel’s gang obtained £33.4m through fraudulent VAT repayment claims. HMRC says the group tried to claim £97m in total. Those figures describe money obtained and money sought; neither is the amount recovered from Patel.

In August 2025, Chester Crown Court ordered Patel to pay £90.5m. HMRC recorded £90,503,211.96 as both his assessed benefit from the offences and the value of assets available to meet the order. The order created a payment obligation, not a record of money already collected.

HMRC had said in 2023 that more than £78m of the gang’s UK assets had been restrained. That earlier figure concerns the wider group and assets preserved for recovery, not payments made under Patel’s individual order. The BBC says Patel is challenging that order in the Court of Appeal; the case remains unresolved.

The BBC also found websites praising a Dubai businessman named Arif Patel and linked some of them to a reputation-management company there. It said it could not determine whether the convicted Patel was connected to the sites. Requests for comment to Dubai’s government and to Patel through his solicitor received no reply, the BBC reported.