A man accused of intimidating a Leicester garment industry worker as he told the media of appalling working conditions is a factory owner who has been disqualified as a company director over tax misconduct, the Guardian has learned.
Mahomed Hanif Musa Patel, 49, was one of two men who watched as a reporter interviewed a worker on Leicester’s Benson Street, at the heart of the city’s garment district. There is no suggestion that the interviewee works for Patel’s company or that it mistreats workers.
In a Twitter post accompanying a widely shared video of the encounter, the two men were accused by the Euronews reporter Luke Hanrahan of “staring and yelling” at the worker.
The interviewee compared working conditions during the coronavirus outbreak to a prison before breaking off and saying: “This guy is telling something, I don’t want him here. I’m gonna tell the truth.” The two men remained at the scene throughout the clip.
Hanrahan said on Sunday that the man being interviewed had subsequently asked him to remove the clip.
On Friday, after a local source told the Guardian that the man standing in the street was Patel, he came to the door at the premises of Dariyai Products Limited, of which he owns a controlling stake.
Patel initially denied being involved in the incident, before he was shown a screenshot of himself in the video. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said. “I know. What about it?”
Patel denied he had sought to intimidate the worker, saying: “I never said no. I just said he’s saying it’s about all the factories – that’s not correct. That’s what I wanted him to understand.” He said a second man swore at the interviewee, but he said that he could not remember the man’s name.
Asked about concerns that factory workers in Leicester are fearful of losing their jobs if they speak up about working conditions or illegal low pay, Patel said: “No one is going to lose their jobs. Everyone’s got rights.”
Hanrahan said Patel had been “deliberately loitering to discourage him [the interviewee] from speaking to us” during the incident. “It was just out and out intimidation tactics,” he said. He added that the two men appeared to be talking about his interviewee and that others nearby shouted at workers not to speak to him.
Companies House records show that Patel owns more than 75% of Dariyai Products and has the right to appoint and fire directors. They also show he was disqualified as a director for conduct while acting for Ezili Dariyai UK Limited, a garment manufacturing company headquartered on the same street as Dariyai Products that was dissolved in April this year.
Records provided to the Guardian by the Insolvency Service show that HMRC was owed £618,059.66 by the company at the date of liquidation. As evidence that it had not been treated equally to other creditors, the authority said that over a four-year period from 2011 to 2015, Dariyai Products paid it just £58,575 out of total expenditure of more than £4m.
According to the Insolvency Service’s 2018 document, Patel did not dispute HMRC’s account and was disqualified as a director until October 2022. He is still allowed to own shares in a company, provided he does not play a part in running it.
Leicester’s garment industry has been in the spotlight since the Guardian reported on a Labour Behind the Label investigation including testimony from workers who alleged they were forced to work without adequate social distancing measures throughout the coronavirus lockdown. Campaigners and experts have since warned that workers are afraid to speak up about conditions.
“There is a real problem in Leicester with workers being afraid to come forward,” said Dominique Muller, of Labour Behind the Label. “These are really vulnerable people who may not have the right to work here, who may fear retribution for what they say, who are being constantly told not that if they speak up they will lose their jobs.”
One worker who spoke to the Guardian on condition of anonymity last week said: “Nobody will speak to you and say who they are. Everybody knows that can lead to problems.”
There have been concerns over the number of manufacturing companies in the city that have been wound up with hefty tax bills only for another firm to spring up with the same owners and no liabilities. “There are real questions over what HMRC can do,” said one auditor. “One thing that’s been made obvious in the last fortnight is that we have toothless regulators.”
The fast fashion brand Boohoo, which has faced criticism over its relationship with suppliers in Leicester, said it had no record of a connection to either company run by Patel.
