A company and its director have been ordered to pay £476,995 at Birmingham Crown Court following an investigation into the fraudulent entry of waste packaging data.
At Birmingham Crown Court, Shaobo Qin, a director of EDU Case Ltd, pleaded guilty to fraud by false representation and was handed a 2-year prison sentence suspended for 18 months.
Qin, 42, was ordered to pay a Proceeds of Crime confiscation order of £255,057, which he must pay within 2 months or face 3 years in prison.
He was also disqualified as a director for 4 years and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work.
EDU Case Ltd was fined £200,000 and the Environment Agency were also awarded £21,995 in investigation costs.
The court was told that Qin’s company, a plastics and recycling exports enterprise, ‘deliberately and systematically’ entered false data into the Environment Agency’s National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) for non-existent waste exports.
The investigation found that Qin benefitted himself and his company approximately £255,000. He was arrested on Wednesday 10 January 2024 and interviewed by Environment Agency officers.
This was a fraud on a large scale and undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that go with it.
EDU Case were accredited to carry out plastic packaging exports and able to issue ‘evidence’ of that activity in the form of tonnage figures on the database.
This evidence could be bought by businesses that are obliged to account for their plastic packaging waste under the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 2007.
The Environment Agency said an audit conducted by its officers in 2023 and information following that work identified discrepancies between the amount of waste exported and the amount of evidence issued.
The false entries represented nearly two-thirds of the business’ entire trade in 2022 towards the end of that year, the regulator said.
In sentencing, the judge said this was without doubt deliberate offending and pre-planned, and there had been a ‘significant undermining’ of the regulatory regime.
The Judge accepted that there had been a guilty plea entered at the first opportunity and that money had been put aside to repay the financial benefit made.
Sham Singh, Senior Environmental Crime Officer for the Environment Agency, commented: “This case shows that the Environment Agency will pursue individuals and their enterprises who profit illegally.
“This was a fraud on a large scale and undermines legitimate business and the investment and economic growth that go with it.
“We support legitimate businesses and are proactively supporting them by disrupting and stopping the criminal element backed up by the threat of tough enforcement as in this case.
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