Murad Dalah – director of cloths, textiles and menswear retailer Tops Cloths – received 21 months imprisonment for each of the ten counts of false accounting to run concurrentluy all suspended for two years.
He was also fined £100,000 – £10,000 for each count – and told to pay £3,450 in costs with two years imprisonment for default of payment within three months.
The fraud occurred when he and his nephew ordered the daily takings record of the shop to be rerwritten to show lower amounts. The shop and other premises were raided in January 1988 and the day after Dalah fled the UK. An arrest warrant was issued in 1990 and he returned to the UK last year and pleaded guilty.
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