Asif Aziz's Criterion Capital manages a row of high-profile shops at Piccadilly Circus. So why does his team keeping renting them to students who vanish without paying millions of pounds in taxes?
An excellent piece of work, but so infuriating. We Londoners are meant to be angry with people claiming benefits they aren't entitled to, people shoplifting, people fare-dodging - because it's stealing from all of us. Meanwhile this obvious robbery of the public purse is allowed to continue and the freeholder can just laugh all the way to the bank.
Utterly disgusting and outrageous. Well done all involved in reporting. You can have only pity for Westminster Council who are trying to clean up the West End
London gets to regularly sell its body to the highest bidder. Used to be the Russians. I feel ashamed as a proud Londoner. This is economically cancerous. Loathe these bogus shops which destroy our economy and so damages the reputation of a two thousand year old city. It’s so wrong to rip off guests to our city like this as well. Has to stop!
A more likey explanation is that are overworked, understaffed, underresourced, and underskilled to tackle what seems to be quite a sophisticated operation. As stated in the article you can't easily go after Criterion as legally it's not their responsibility. The tenant companies and their 'owners' disappear and reappear anew, while shell companies mask the true owners. You're going to need a really concerted effort to get to those responsible and/or change the law so Criterion has some kind of duty of due dilligence it can be held accountable by if its tenants are found to be hooky.
Surely a dog whistle comment needs to leave only one unstated possible answer. This comment could imply HMRC are avoiding pressing the issue because of the power of Aziz. It could imply that HMRC are avoiding it because they know they don't have the capacity to pull off the investigation.
I agree with the comment - HMRC must know they haven't received any tax from a significant number of central London businesses in years. They chase me enough for my meagre contribution. So why hasn't anything been done? And I'm not looking at those students, they're clearly not to blame. This is a much larger criminal enterprise.
You implied that HMRC is deliberately avoiding investigating "overseas students from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh".
Either this is meaningless speculation and therefore not worth saying because it's meaningless or you're trying to imply something or allow people to broadcast their own bias onto your comment.
Either say what you want to say (i.e. be clear) or say something meaningful, with intent. When you hover inbetween the two you create a huge speculation gap that can be filled by bad actors. Don't do that.
“He said there is no need for new laws, simply a willingness by central government to enforce existing rules — and gain tens of millions of pounds of extra tax revenue in the process.”
Sounds like they’re not investigating to me. Probably because they know they have no hope of reclaiming the £ or catching the individuals behind it so they would rather go after lower hanging fruit.
Mate stop policing me as if this was a court of law instead of a comment section. You are not my editor, you are not my boss, and you do not deserve any further explanation from me same as I do not deserve your truly bad faith from you. Of course I have a bias! I never pretended otherwise? Leave me alone
Amazing reporting - made me finally convert to a paid subscriber. Utterly infuriating - issues around corporate structure and tax evasion is continuously framed as being deeply complex and hard to counter and yet here you guys are making it obvious and easily digestible. Thank you!
Another great piece of investigative fact-based proper journalism! I find it so demoralising that this sort of activity can happen, even though it is illegal, and the likes of HMRC are unable/unwilling to pursue. The result of this is that we, the honest law-abiding individuals, suffer.
London Centric is great fun and informative, more than justifying the subscription alone. But it’s also the public service journalism London has been sorely missing. Hope there’s some way to make video work to get it the audience it deserves on TikTok/YouTube/Facebook
I've been on Tiktok for a few years and there 100% is a big audience on there for this sort of story. Even just simple short promos could drive a lot of traffic here I think
Keep up the good work, and the pressure on Criterion Capital. As someone closely involved with the campaign to save Central YMCA and attempts to pressure Asif Aziz and co into recognising the damage caused by the closure of this cherished community asset, every new revelation about the Aziz empire further stokes my furnace of fury.
One does wonder, in all this absence of accountable tenants, how, in the presence of so much evaporation of cash, Aziz and Criterion were and are able to make sure they get their commercial rents and from whom. They surely won't be so casual about due diligence of prospective tenants, who they really are, and in securing assurance that the rents will be, and are, paid before people do a bunk without paying VAT or commercial rates due? Do the gas, electricity or water bills get paid?
Presumably most of the customers are paying by card. It should be fairly straightforward for HMRC to trace the funds through the payment processor to the actual beneficial owner of the shops.
So someone whose tenants evade tax is leaving to save him personal tax.
Following your other excellent report on harry potter-themed shops doing the same, with the same opaque networks of companies, it is clear there is a huge national problem. I hope and assume the changes involving providing ID and proof of address to register a UK company coming in next year (unbelievable that it hasn't been the case before) will help. But doesn't sound like it's enough if someone else can be the true owner.
How do they manage the transfer of control? If Company A goes tits up how are its assets transferred to Company B without bankruptcy proceedings, a pre-pack etc? What are the tax liabilities involved here?
In the same vein, Is Criterion issuing a new lease every 12 months?
Does their stock supplier of sweets and trinkets get a new customer every 12 months? Do they offer this new company commercial credit or do they force them to pay cash-on-delivery because they have no trading history?
What fees and charges rates are they paying to their credit card processors as a new company? Ditto their insurers?
All of these 3rd parties should be assessing these new companies with no history as high-risk and charging them top whack fees/percentages. If they aren't... Why not? It stinks to high heaven...
its very likely someone is committing a crime. i think in the UK its illegal to knowingly trade while insolvent in order defraud creditors. it would be interesting to know what 'market prices' they are paying for their lease or their suppliers. its likely this is how the money is siphoned off. so instead of paying VAT/corporation tax/business rates you just pay a higher price to your suppliers or a higher lease.
If I wanted to rent a flat I would have to provide so many references and proof of income.
Seems incredible, total double standards and almost negligent that some of London’s prime real estate can be rented by short lived and shady companies such as this.
Time to make the landlord ultimately liable for tenants failure to pay business rates at least; via a bonding system. If it is illegal to rent domestic properties without verifying the immigration status, then commercial landlords should be required to validate tenants as well (companies house, directors names and addresses etc) and require a bond of one years rent to offset missing trader tax liabilities (from a commercial bond holder) or take the full missing trader tax liability themselves.
An excellent piece of work, but so infuriating. We Londoners are meant to be angry with people claiming benefits they aren't entitled to, people shoplifting, people fare-dodging - because it's stealing from all of us. Meanwhile this obvious robbery of the public purse is allowed to continue and the freeholder can just laugh all the way to the bank.
Utterly disgusting and outrageous. Well done all involved in reporting. You can have only pity for Westminster Council who are trying to clean up the West End
London gets to regularly sell its body to the highest bidder. Used to be the Russians. I feel ashamed as a proud Londoner. This is economically cancerous. Loathe these bogus shops which destroy our economy and so damages the reputation of a two thousand year old city. It’s so wrong to rip off guests to our city like this as well. Has to stop!
Thank goodness at last real journalists gets to grip with this. E Standard sold its soul years ago. How has this been allowed to happen?!? How!?
At this point I wonder if HMRC are avoiding investigation intentionally.
Impressive journalism here, really.
A more likey explanation is that are overworked, understaffed, underresourced, and underskilled to tackle what seems to be quite a sophisticated operation. As stated in the article you can't easily go after Criterion as legally it's not their responsibility. The tenant companies and their 'owners' disappear and reappear anew, while shell companies mask the true owners. You're going to need a really concerted effort to get to those responsible and/or change the law so Criterion has some kind of duty of due dilligence it can be held accountable by if its tenants are found to be hooky.
Why would they do that?
Don't dog whistle.
Surely a dog whistle comment needs to leave only one unstated possible answer. This comment could imply HMRC are avoiding pressing the issue because of the power of Aziz. It could imply that HMRC are avoiding it because they know they don't have the capacity to pull off the investigation.
I agree with the comment - HMRC must know they haven't received any tax from a significant number of central London businesses in years. They chase me enough for my meagre contribution. So why hasn't anything been done? And I'm not looking at those students, they're clearly not to blame. This is a much larger criminal enterprise.
I'm a random account doing an if and HMRC are not a protected characteristic. Do not Reddit keyboard warrior.
You implied that HMRC is deliberately avoiding investigating "overseas students from India, Pakistan, or Bangladesh".
Either this is meaningless speculation and therefore not worth saying because it's meaningless or you're trying to imply something or allow people to broadcast their own bias onto your comment.
Either say what you want to say (i.e. be clear) or say something meaningful, with intent. When you hover inbetween the two you create a huge speculation gap that can be filled by bad actors. Don't do that.
“He said there is no need for new laws, simply a willingness by central government to enforce existing rules — and gain tens of millions of pounds of extra tax revenue in the process.”
Sounds like they’re not investigating to me. Probably because they know they have no hope of reclaiming the £ or catching the individuals behind it so they would rather go after lower hanging fruit.
Mate stop policing me as if this was a court of law instead of a comment section. You are not my editor, you are not my boss, and you do not deserve any further explanation from me same as I do not deserve your truly bad faith from you. Of course I have a bias! I never pretended otherwise? Leave me alone
If you make comments in a comment section, you might get challenged on them, my dear snowflake
Amazing reporting - made me finally convert to a paid subscriber. Utterly infuriating - issues around corporate structure and tax evasion is continuously framed as being deeply complex and hard to counter and yet here you guys are making it obvious and easily digestible. Thank you!
Another great piece of investigative fact-based proper journalism! I find it so demoralising that this sort of activity can happen, even though it is illegal, and the likes of HMRC are unable/unwilling to pursue. The result of this is that we, the honest law-abiding individuals, suffer.
London Centric is great fun and informative, more than justifying the subscription alone. But it’s also the public service journalism London has been sorely missing. Hope there’s some way to make video work to get it the audience it deserves on TikTok/YouTube/Facebook
Open to ideas and aware that words are somewhat out of fashion.
But it’s already a seven day a week, dawn to dusk job just to keep the newsletter full of investigations.
I've been on Tiktok for a few years and there 100% is a big audience on there for this sort of story. Even just simple short promos could drive a lot of traffic here I think
Keep up the good work, and the pressure on Criterion Capital. As someone closely involved with the campaign to save Central YMCA and attempts to pressure Asif Aziz and co into recognising the damage caused by the closure of this cherished community asset, every new revelation about the Aziz empire further stokes my furnace of fury.
One does wonder, in all this absence of accountable tenants, how, in the presence of so much evaporation of cash, Aziz and Criterion were and are able to make sure they get their commercial rents and from whom. They surely won't be so casual about due diligence of prospective tenants, who they really are, and in securing assurance that the rents will be, and are, paid before people do a bunk without paying VAT or commercial rates due? Do the gas, electricity or water bills get paid?
I have forwarded a copy of the article to my London Labour MP with a request for action. I will let you know what her reply is.
Presumably most of the customers are paying by card. It should be fairly straightforward for HMRC to trace the funds through the payment processor to the actual beneficial owner of the shops.
Not necessarily, tourists will take a lot of cash on holiday.
It’s almost impossible to trace money flows if they’re done by people trying to hide where the money is ultimately going.
So someone whose tenants evade tax is leaving to save him personal tax.
Following your other excellent report on harry potter-themed shops doing the same, with the same opaque networks of companies, it is clear there is a huge national problem. I hope and assume the changes involving providing ID and proof of address to register a UK company coming in next year (unbelievable that it hasn't been the case before) will help. But doesn't sound like it's enough if someone else can be the true owner.
How do they manage the transfer of control? If Company A goes tits up how are its assets transferred to Company B without bankruptcy proceedings, a pre-pack etc? What are the tax liabilities involved here?
In the same vein, Is Criterion issuing a new lease every 12 months?
Does their stock supplier of sweets and trinkets get a new customer every 12 months? Do they offer this new company commercial credit or do they force them to pay cash-on-delivery because they have no trading history?
What fees and charges rates are they paying to their credit card processors as a new company? Ditto their insurers?
All of these 3rd parties should be assessing these new companies with no history as high-risk and charging them top whack fees/percentages. If they aren't... Why not? It stinks to high heaven...
its very likely someone is committing a crime. i think in the UK its illegal to knowingly trade while insolvent in order defraud creditors. it would be interesting to know what 'market prices' they are paying for their lease or their suppliers. its likely this is how the money is siphoned off. so instead of paying VAT/corporation tax/business rates you just pay a higher price to your suppliers or a higher lease.
If I wanted to rent a flat I would have to provide so many references and proof of income.
Seems incredible, total double standards and almost negligent that some of London’s prime real estate can be rented by short lived and shady companies such as this.
Pull a finger out, HMRC
Time to make the landlord ultimately liable for tenants failure to pay business rates at least; via a bonding system. If it is illegal to rent domestic properties without verifying the immigration status, then commercial landlords should be required to validate tenants as well (companies house, directors names and addresses etc) and require a bond of one years rent to offset missing trader tax liabilities (from a commercial bond holder) or take the full missing trader tax liability themselves.
That would change this issue sharpish
More fantastic reporting, thank you for drawing attention to what everyone suspects but cannot prove!