The defendant being described as a tanker driver, it had been suggested that he along with others had sold £500,000 worth of red. Trial collapses due to prosecution evidence disclosure failings. He has maintained is innocence throughout.
It’s a bit vague as to what crime he’d actually been indicted on.
“Selling Red” ain’t a crime, nor is “buying red with intent to supply”. 
He was charged with others with conspiracy to evade VAT by selling nearly £500,000 of laundered so-called red diesel fuel.
Red diesel is only legal for off-road vehicles such as tractors, and has a much lower VAT rate.
A VAT fraud involving the fuel works by removing the red dye to make it look like regular diesel before the fuel is then sold on fraudulently at the higher VAT rate.
The same disclosure failings meant that a linked trial of petrol station owners, due to begin a few weeks later, was also abandoned.
Lawyers in the case estimate the two trials cost in excess of £2m of public money.
After a four-year investigation by HMRC, the case went to trial in January at Liverpool Crown Court.
But a month into the trial, a vast amount of information that should have been disclosed to the defence was identified on the laptop of the HMRC investigating officer, Daniel Grundy.
Surely if Red diesel is “Laundered” - then it has been strained through Fuller’s Earth, and is no longer Red…?
Therefore if the bloody stuff is still red at the point of sale - NO crime has been committed, unless the Cherry had been stolen at the outset, which isn’t spoken of in the indictment.
I thought the scam involving Red Diesel was “removing the dye” and then flogging it as DERV fuel - i.e. standard “White Diesel”.?
That would be a duty-avoidance scam, rather than a VAT scam, although I’ve heard the VAT scan referred to as “Rebate Fraud” as well.