Grew, Aidan

Aidan Grew was convicted in November 2008 of fraudulent evasion of customs duty. Mr Grew received a sentence of three years’ imprisonment suspended for two years and a confiscation order for the recoverable amount of £500,000 with three years’ imprisonment in default.

The CCRC received an application for review of Mr Grew’s sentence in September 2014.

Mr Grew had pleaded guilty to his involvement in the fraudulent joint enterprise evasion of duty on five million cigarettes. He consented to a confiscation order.

Mr Grew then appealed the confiscation order to the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal (NICA) on the basis that that the confiscation order had been made on the mistaken belief that the provisions of the Excise Goods (Holding, Movement and Warehousing and REDS) Regulations 1992 were extant and had been imported into the Tobacco Products Regulations 2001.

Mr Grew’s appeal was heard alongside that of his co-defendant and three others. All the appeals were dismissed.

The appellants, except for Mr Grew, appealed to the Supreme Court on two issues of public importance.

The Supreme Court quashed the confiscation orders on the basis that the trial court and Court of Appeal had been wrong to assume that the admission of participation in a joint criminal enterprise necessarily meant that all of the defendants had benefitted to the full extent.

The cases were remitted to the trial court for the confiscation orders to be considered afresh.

The CCRC considered that the Supreme Court’s decision represented a significant argument in favour of referring Mr Grew’s confiscation order to NICA for them to remit the case so that he could join his co-defendant in the trial Court.

The CCRC referred the sentence in November 2014.

The Northern Ireland Court of Appeal allowed the appeal in February 2015.