In this month’s scandals, convictions and penalties, accountant jailed over stealing from their employer, tobacco smuggler imprisoned for unpaid duty on two million cigarettes, and recycling director banned over failed tax payments

The failure to submit accounting records and pay thousands of pounds worth of tax has seen two Lancashire nightclub owners given seven-year directorship disqualifications

Three men involved in a fraudulent £29.5m claim for research and development (R&D) tax relief on a bogus IT project have been jailed for a total of 21 years

A director who bought unwanted items from charity shops for re-sale has been banned for six years after failing to pay almost £1.2m in taxes due on the company’s operations

A husband and wife have been disqualified as directors for 16 years after their distribution firm’s insolvency exposed that banned bankrupt was managing company

The boss of a Sunderland restaurant has been disqualified from running companies for seven years after failing to pay £130,000 in tax

A London property developer has been jailed for 27 months after diverting £91,000 of customer payments to his personal account and falsifying documents from the tax authorities

An accountant from Hertfordshire has been jailed for fraud after pleading guilty to stealing over £188,000 from his employer

A Buckinghamshire man has been jailed for six years after he illegally imported more than two million cigarettes, stole hundreds of thousands of pounds in VAT and then fled the country to escape punishment

Dominic Chappell, the entrepreneur who bought BHS for £1 in 2015, has been found guilty of evading tax of £584,000 and jailed for six years

In this month’s scandals, convictions and penalties, forex trading duo banned over mis-used millions from client cash, US oil data company charged over five-year multimillion accounting fraud, and director disqualified over failure to legitimise payments

Arrests have been made over alleged fraud related to coronavirus support schemes, as HMRC ramps up enforcement action against possible abuse of funding targeted to help businesses throughout the pandemic

An accountant convicted of defrauding a company pension scheme of £292,000 has been ordered to repay the money

The director of a payroll services company has been disqualified after failing to explain the true nature of £2.7m of payments made over a two-month period

A father and son team who ran an electrical installations company have banned for a total of 26 years after the pair breached previous disqualifications, and failed to meet accounting obligations