Limo hire firm fined £10k for illegal ride

A car company was caught illegally carrying 10 teenagers to a party in a Hummer during a crackdown on luxury limos used for school proms in the Black Country, a court heard.

The move triggered a failed cover up by the firm's director Bilal Aziz in a bid to save it from being fined.

The 29-year-old boss of Birmingham-based A2Z Limos 4 U Ltd produced false papers, but handwriting experts exposed the scam and he was given a suspended jail sentence after admitting attempting to pervert the course of justice.

Aziz was given 20 weeks behind bars, suspended for two years, and ordered to do 200 hours of unpaid work when he appeared before Wolverhampton Crown Court earlier this month.

Yesterday the firm was also ordered to pay £10,800 in fines and costs and his brother Iqbal, 30, who was driving the Hummer when it was stopped, was fined £250 with £315 costs at the city's magistrates court for the original offences.

The limo was pulled over during a joint operation by police and staff from the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (Vosa) as it took 10 16-year-olds from Cheslyn Hay High School to a prom at Wolverhampton's Park Hall Hotel on July 10, 2009.

The white Hummer did not have the necessary public service vehicle certificate of fitness needed to carry passengers on the trip.

Bilal Aziz later gave a Vosa traffic examiner a piece of paper that appeared to show the Hummer had been employed as a self-drive hire by one of the female passengers - making her and her family legally responsible for the job. But handwriting experts confirmed the signature of the 16-year-old girl had been copied from a booking confirmation.

A2Z Limos 4 U Ltd, based at the brothers' home in Russell Road, Moseley, admitted allowing the use of a PSV operator's licence with intent to deceive, using a public service vehicle without a certificate of fitness, not having a tachograph, failing to produce a tachograph record sheet, and using the vehicle with neither third party insurance nor a test certificate.

It was fined a total of £10,200 with £600 costs.

Iqbal Aziz admitted driving without a tachograph, failing to produce a record sheet and allowing the use of a PSV operator's licence with intent to deceive.