More than 70 businesses and homes in the UK and Spain were raided on Wednesday.

In England searches and arrests were made in Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Coventry, Essex, Lancashire, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Middlesex, Northampton, Reading, Sheffield, Slough, Staffordshire, Surrey and Wolverhampton.

Raids also took place in South Wales in Cardiff and Wrexham.

About 350 Customs officers were involved, helped by police in Britain and Spain.

'Missing trader' fraud

Searches were also carried out in Barcelona and Malaga in mainland Spain, plus the islands of Majorca and Tenerife.

The raids related to a network of companies that "carousel" large quantities of mobile phones.

The practice is believed to involve buying mobile phones from the continent VAT free and supplying them to businesses in the UK.

Companies then sell the phones back to the Continent, without payment of VAT to the UK Government and without the phones ever being used by a consumer.

The crime has also been dubbed "missing trader" fraud and costs around �2.3bn a year.