Alias came to our attention during a wider BBC probe into illegal working and criminality linked to some High Street businesses, including mini-marts and barbershops.<\/p>\n
His name was mentioned in social media videos, including on Kurdish Facebook pages, where business owners in the UK praised his ability to resolve problems linked to immigration fines.<\/p>\n
For months we monitored these videos, which carried Alias’s name, that of his law firm, Liberty Solicitors, and a mobile phone number. Some had more than 20,000 views.<\/p>\n
In one, a Kurdish-speaking shop owner explained that, after having been issued with a penalty for employing an illegal worker, he had “tried two or three different places to get it sorted but nobody could resolve it”.<\/p>\n
He went on to say that “Mr Alias” had got the fine cancelled – showing a letter as evidence.<\/p>\n
Alias told the BBC he had not commissioned, paid for, approved or circulated videos on social media.<\/p>\n
Our reporter contacted Alias on the phone, claiming to be a business owner who faced a fine after immigration officers had found somebody working at his mini-mart illegally.<\/p>\n
There was no actual shop, worker, or fine.<\/p>\n
During the call, which we recorded, Alias told our reporter his services would cost 10% of the fine – in this case, \u00a34,500 – and he would want money up front.<\/p>\n
Alias explained how liability for the fine could be shifted to somebody outside the UK, if that person could be named as owner of the business.<\/p>\n
“Do you have anybody’s name who we can use? Anybody who’s gone back to Iraq, gone back to Iran?” he asked.<\/p>\n
He then offered a fictitious example: “Say we put forward Karwan, yeah? Then fine come on Karwan’s name. Karwan not here, Karwan in Iraq.”<\/p>\n
What Alias appeared to be proposing was the use of a “ghost director” – in other words, someone who is paid to put their name on official documents, thereby masking the real owner of a business.<\/p>\n
Using ghost directors is a widespread illegal practice, the law enforcement official told us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alias came to our attention during a wider BBC probe into illegal working and criminality linked to some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-809436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=809436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}