POLICE have seized £300,000 from a suspected bogus pension scheme they believe is run by two men who were jailed for a £54million VAT fraud.

It is the first time officers have used civil confiscation powers to seize funds from a pension scheme.

Police said the Brian John Meehan, formerly of Wyfordby Avenue, Blackburn, and his son-in-law Gerard Martin McAllister, formerly of Glen Eagles Drive, Brockhall Village, Old Langho, were joint managing trustees of the Bridge Products Executive Pension Scheme.

Meehan and McAllister are each serving four-and-a-half year sentences after being found guilty of cheating the public revenue last year.

It alleged the pension scheme was funded through a VAT scam where mobile phones and computer chips were bought free of VAT from other countries in the EU and sold on in the UK without paying tax.

The assets from Bridge Products Executive Pension Scheme have now been frozen following the Assets Recovery Agency successful application to the High Court in London.

After the case, ARA deputy director of operations, Charlie Dickin, said: "In this case we have reason to believe that the respondents have invested criminal profits in this pension fund that they would be able to draw on.

"I am delighted that we have been able to frustrate this plan by freezing the assets of this pension fund.

"Missing trader fraud is not merely a paper fraud but often features links to other forms of criminal activity.

"As those seeking to invest or launder their criminal profits become more ingenious in their methods, so the agency has to continue to use sophisticated investigative methods with its highly trained team of investigators."

Both Meehan and McAllister were the directors of a mobile phone selling company, Bridge GSM, through which the fraud was carried out.

They were part of an eight-strong gang, headed by Emmanuel Hening, a trader with dual Belgian/French nationality. All were convicted of cheating Her Majesty's Custom & Revenue (HMRC) of a total of £54m