Lawyer caught offering to make illegal-worker fine go away

**Bradford solicitor secretly filmed proposing scheme to evade illegal-worker fines**

A Bradford-based solicitor was filmed by the BBC proposing to help a business owner avoid a £45,000 fine for employing illegal workers by shifting liability to someone overseas.

Mohammad Alias Yousaf, trading as Alias at Liberty Solicitors, told an undercover BBC reporter posing as a mini-mart owner how to use a "ghost director" arrangement. Alias suggested naming someone based outside the UK as the business owner, so the fine would be issued to that person instead.

"Do you have anybody's name who we can use? Anybody who's gone back to Iraq, gone back to Iran?" Alias asked during a recorded phone call. He offered a worked example: "Say we put forward Karwan, yeah? Then fine come on Karwan's name. Karwan not here, Karwan in Iraq."

Alias quoted a fee of 10 percent of the fine, requesting £4,500 up front. He did not provide a receipt when the undercover reporter delivered £250 in cash to his Bradford office.

When a second undercover journalist posed as the proposed overseas owner, Alias repeatedly pressed him to confirm he was the real owner of the business, despite apparent uncertainty about the mini-mart's true ownership. Legal expert Bryony Rest, who reviewed the recording, called the proposed advice "quite appalling" for a solicitor to offer.

Alias denies ever providing such advice to anyone or giving false information to the Home Office. Social media videos, including on Kurdish Facebook pages, had promoted his services to UK business owners facing immigration fines, accumulating more than 20,000 views in some cases. Alias said he did not commission, pay for, approve or circulate the videos.

Home Office data obtained by the BBC shows at least £150m in uncollected illegal-working fines remains outstanding. Between 2021 and 2025, the Home Office issued 5,755 fines worth a total of £215m, but collected only £60.5m. A law enforcement official told the BBC that many business owners do not take the fines seriously, describing seeing notices worth £40,000 stuffed in a box on a mini-mart counter.

In response to the investigation, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced a review of how such fines are issued and collected. The maximum penalty for knowingly employing illegal workers rose to £60,000 in 2024, up from £15,000 previously.