UK tax agency
UK tax agency threatened with lawsuit over ‘Israeli’ settlement imports
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- A four-year investigation reviewed more than 30,000 export documents and found settlement produce in one in six agricultural shipments.
- At least 42% of settlement goods were allegedly falsely labeled as originating inside ‘Israel’.
- Exporters allegedly bypassed origin checks by mixing produce, using Israeli company headquarters, and providing sham addresses.
Britain’s tax and customs authority, HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), is threatened with legal action for allegedly failing to stop illegal 'Israeli' settlement products from entering the United Kingdom under duty-free trade preferences, Sky News reported Saturday.
A formal legal letter submitted by law firm Leigh Day on behalf of the US-based Global Echo Litigation Center accuses HMRC of systematically violating trade rules by permitting agricultural goods produced in 'Israeli' settlements across occupied Palestine to enter the UK illegally exempt from standard tariffs.
Fraudulent verification
The threat of litigation follows an extensive four-year investigation by Global Echo, which analyzed over 30,000 export documents spanning eight years of 'Israeli' trade with the UK and the European Union.
The investigation revealed that one in six agricultural shipments originating from ‘Israel’ contained produce harvested in illegal colonial settlements.
Crucially, at least 42 percent of these settlement products were falsely labeled as grown inside 'Israel' to evade tariffs and mislead British consumers.
According to the legal filing, exporters allegedly bypassed origin checks by mixing settlement-grown produce with crops from inside 1948 territories, listing ‘Israeli’ headquarters instead of the actual settlement farms, and using sham addresses and postcodes to conceal their supply chains.
Under existing trade agreements, while products from 'Israel' qualify for preferential tariffs, goods produced in illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land do not.
Global Echo emphasized that HMRC's "flawed" verification protocols have effectively granted settlement operations hundreds of thousands of pounds in unlawful import duty reductions.
Read more: Experts believe Gaza sewage forced shutdown of five ‘Israeli’ desalination plants
Mounting pressure on the UK government
The legal threat comes as Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s administration faces growing public and political demands to enforce a total ban on trade with illegal 'Israeli' settlements.
Recent polling reveals that 87 percent of Labour Party members support a complete embargo on settlement trade.
Human rights organizations and legal experts note that permitting settlement trade directly contradicts the 2024 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which mandated all states to abstain from trade or investment relations that sustain the occupation.
Global Echo called on HMRC to immediately classify all imports declared as 'Israeli' as high-risk, demanding rigorous physical and document checks to halt the influx of illegal settlement goods into British markets.
