The lengths to which some criminally-intended business owners will go to defraud business insurance were exposed in court in Leicester last month.
Three men, Aram Kurd, Hawkar Hassan and Arkan Ali, used “many, many litres of petrol” to set fire to the basement of Kurd’s supermarket in Leicester in February 2018, with the intention of profiting from the insurance on the loss of stock, contents and future loss of business from the shop.
They hoped to make £300,000 on an insurance policy that had recently been taken out on the business.
Five people died in the explosion and subsequent fire, which completely destroyed the supermarket and the flat above it.
The supermarket employee who died was claimed by the prosecution to have been implicated in the arrangement of the insurance. It was suggested that she was deliberately detained in the shop and killed because “she knew too much.”
In addition to the five people who died, a passerby was seriously injured, and a 15 year-old boy was rescued from the rubble.
Film footage from a CCTV camera on a neighbouring business showed one of the convicted men apparently changing the angle of the camera three days before the explosion. Another of the men was recorded on a security camera escaping from the rear of the shop before the explosion.
The third man was shown on CCTV buying 26 litres of petrol from a garage.
The three men are awaiting sentencing by the Crown Court judge.