A fraudster who spent millions of pounds from Covid PPE deals on luxury cars, watches, holidays and a new home has been jailed.
Craig Morris, 43, and his boss Jogesh Bhandari, 60, were convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation after a five-week trial at Leicester Crown Court in July.
The pair spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on luxury goods after pretending they could supply millions of boxes of nitrile gloves in the US and Germany.
Sentencing at Northampton Crown Court
On Wednesday, Morris was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison at Northampton Crown Court. Meenakshi Bhandari, 58, the wife of Jogesh Bhandari and a former pharmacist, was handed a two-year prison sentence, suspended for two years, 250 hours of unpaid work and 15 days of rehabilitation activity.
The court heard that Jogesh Bhandari did not attend the hearing because he told his counsel he was taking a “very extreme painkiller” after having a pacemaker fitted last week and was not able to travel to Northampton.
Judge William Harbage KC sentenced the other two defendants in his absence because “the case cannot just be put off and put off at Mr Bhandari’s will”.
Fraudulent PPE deals
Prosecutor Michael Bisgrove told the court Jogesh Bhandari was the “driving force and the instigator” of the offending, while Morris was “very much working for” him.
He said: “The offences took place during the Covid-19 pandemic at a time when there was a desperate shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).”
The court heard that Jogesh Bhandari and Morris made fraudulent deals under a company called Banton, defrauding US company Med18 and German firm MedTech by sending contracts for equipment they did not have.
Mr Bisgrove said: “In the course of the fraud, they took millions of pounds which they used for their own benefit – to buy cars, luxury goods and property.”
Money laundering and convictions
The court heard the Bhandaris, of Mitchell Drive in Loughborough, Leicestershire, also used money to pay off family debt. Morris, of All Saints Road in Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, who is a father of two teenage children, bought a house.
The value of money Jogesh Bhandari obtained and kept in the course of the fraud was £1.75 million, and Meenakshi Bhandari laundered money to the value of £960,000.
Morris had been receiving regular £5,000 payments from Jogesh Bhandari before the two men fell out at the end of 2021, the National Crime Agency (NCA) previously said.
Bhandari worked with Frank Labruzzo, a US assistant attorney general at the Louisiana State Department of Justice, who provided a fraudulent escrow service. The court heard that Labruzzo and another person involved have been convicted and sentenced in the US.
Jogesh Bhandari is expected to be sentenced on October 16.
Sentencing Morris and Meenakshi Bhandari, Judge Harbage said the pandemic was a time when “all of us had to make sacrifices and pull together for the good of society as a whole”. He added: “There were a few people though who sought to exploit that to make money for themselves, motivated by greed. I’m satisfied Jogesh Bhandari and Craig Morris fall into that category.”
