Huddersfield shop loses licence over 'links to serious organised criminals'

A Huddersfield off-licence selling illegal cigarettes and stolen alcohol has lost its licence.

After a series of visits to Hudds Wines at Kirkgate revealed concerning activity, West Yorkshire Police (WYP) applied for a review of the premises licence. This was carried out by Kirklees Council’s Licensing Panel today (September 17), and ended with the licence being revoked.

WYP first attended the shop on June 10, 2024 and officers seized a black dustbin containing 1,700 illegal cigarettes and five pouches of illegal tobacco. The licence holder, Amir Ahmedi, was working in the shop at the time said he was storing the items for a friend and hadn’t realised they were illegal.

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A warning letter was then issued, explicitly stating that the premises must not sell or store illegal cigarettes or tobacco. However, this was ignored as the shop continued to market these goods.

This was confirmed during a subsequent test purchase carried out on July 11 by West Yorkshire Trading Standards (WYTS) who were able to purchase more illegal cigarettes. A few days later, a further search was carried out between the two authorities where more worrying discoveries were made.

On this occasion, 227 illegal vapes were found, along with numerous empty packaging sleeves from non-duty cigarettes. Several bottles of spirits thought to be stolen were seized with security tags still around their necks, one of which had burn marks as though someone had tried to remove the tag by setting it on fire.

Raising further concern, in this case for public health, was the store room where rat droppings had been found on the floor – in the same room where snacks and drinks were kept to be put on sale.

At today’s meeting, PC Swift reiterated that the licence holder has “no regard for the law or the safety of his customers” and urged the panel to revoke the licence. She said the shop’s activities were “greatly impacting” the licensing objectives of public safety and the prevention of crime and disorder.

Jason Bethell, Illicit Tobacco Officer at WYTS said the case could be linked to “serious organised criminality”.

Speaking of the type of cigarettes that had been seized by WYP in the first instance, he said: “There’s no legitimate global market for them in the world, basically, they’re made for the illegal market. They’re manufactured and smuggled into countries by organised criminal gangs so to get your hands on these, you’ve got to have links to serious organised criminality.”

He continued: “The state of the shop was absolutely disgusting – buckets of stagnant grey water stood about that absolutely reeked, the floor was covered in discarded food and cardboard and was clearly infested by rats everywhere.

“Stock that was going to be sold in the shop was being stacked on the floor with access to the rats that were running round in there.”

A council officer told the meeting that the licence holder had emailed to inform them that the premises had since been cleaned up but this clearly wasn’t enough to alleviate the concerns of the panel.

As the meeting concluded and the decision was announced, the Chair, Cllr Zarina Amin (Labour, Ashbrow), commented: “The reason for the panel’s decision is that there are concerns with regard to the safety of the public, specifically the health-related risks associated with counterfeit tobacco.

“The panel was disappointed that despite a warning from West Yorkshire Police to the premises licence holder with regard to the sale of illicit tobacco products and handling stolen goods, this was not heeded and the licence holder continued with this behaviour.”

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