An Aberdeen filmmaker will go on trial for alleged fraud offences involving over £78,000 from transactions spanning more than five years.
Hassan Nazer, who filmed the movie ‘Utopia’ in Aberdeen, is accused of fraudulently obtaining money from customers knowing full well he had his assets sequestrated in 2010.
Court papers state that the 43-year-old was banned from running a limited company when he is alleged to have opened a business bank account.
It’s claimed he did so in the name of his co-accused Masoud Mehri, also 43, and used that account for his business Pasargad Warehouse Ltd.
That business was registered to the home of his Piccolo Pizza business at Bon-Accord Terrace, Aberdeen.
Accused of profiting from illegally-charged VAT
The charges state that, between April 14 2020 and October 4 2015, Nazer and Mehri repeatedly charged customers VAT using a registration number that Nazer had previously been given by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), “in the knowledge that said value-added tax registration number had previously been deregistered” by him.
Nazer is also alleged to have induced customers to pay him money inclusive of tax, and that he did “receive £470,290 or thereby inclusive £78, 381 of value added tax by electronic transfers into the said business bank account and in money”.
The charge further states that he failed to declare that VAT to HMRC and transferred £113,389 or thereby into his own personal bank account.
He’s alleged to have transferred £43,773 to his co-accused Mehri, both sums being inclusive of VAT.
It’s claimed that Nazer did this with “both sums of money being inclusive of value-added tax, the truth being that you were not entitled to charge customers value added tax using said tax registration number and you did obtain £78,381 or thereby by fraud”.
Accused appears in the dock
Both men have also been charged with the allegation that they “were knowingly concerned in the fraudulent evasion of Value Added Tax amounting to £78,381 or thereby”, in that they did fail to declare to HMRC that they were in receipt of VAT.
Both men deny charges of operating a fraudulent scheme and tax evasion.
Nazer, who appeared in the dock at Aberdeen Sheriff Court on Tuesday without his co-accused, faces a final charge of failing to appear in court for a hearing in January 2019.
Hassan Nazer is well-known film director
His movie ‘Winners’ was his first feature film fully financed and produced in Scotland and was premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival last August.
Nazer’s film ‘Utopia’ was filmed in Aberdeen, Afghanistan and India and was nominated for a foreign-language category at the 2016 Oscars before being disqualified for containing too much English dialogue.
Solicitors David Sutherland, representing Nazer, and Ian MacGregor, representing Mehri, told Sheriff Graham Buchanan that both men were maintaining not-guilty pleas to their respective charges.
Nazer, of Raeburn Place, Aberdeen and Mehri, who is currently a prisoner at HMP Grampian, will both stand trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court in September.
When the case returned to Aberdeen Sheriff Court in September 2023 not guilty pleas were accepted in respect to Mr Nazer. The full story can be read here
For all the latest court cases in Aberdeen as well as crime and breaking incidents, join our Facebook group.
