Aftab Baig, from Glasgow, had no links to the popular bakery chain. A fraudster has been found guilty of conning a council out of £710,000 by claiming Covid relief for chains of Greggs bakeries he did not own. Aftab Baig, of Paisley Road West in Glasgow, pretended to work at the popular high street bakery to make fraudulent grant claims against 32 branches - despite having no links to the business whatsoever.
The 47-year-old claimed relief from the small business grant fund, designed to keep small businesses afloat during the Covid lockdown, to be paid into his business account for his own catering business. Baig contacted Leeds City Council in May 2020 pretending to be a property manager at Greggs head office asking for business rates numbers for Leeds branches - details which he claimed he could not access himself due to lockdown - so he could apply for the fund.
When the council realised the claims were fraudulent they froze his account and Baig was arrested in Glasgow two months later. While most of the money was later returned to the council, more than £90,000 was left outstanding. National Crime Agency officers found £16,000 in cash at his house alongside forged remittance slips which officers believed he was planning to use to try and persuade the bank to return the frozen money.
Baig was found guilty of three counts of fraud on 12 February following a trial at Leeds Crown Court. After the conviction, Kelly Ward from the Crown Prosecution Service said: “Baig took advantage of the difficult circumstances of the pandemic in 2020 to defraud the council out of taxpayers money. “Those who cheat the public purse are stealing funds which should rightly go towards services and the community, or in this case towards supporting small businesses through an extremely challenging time.
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