A SHOP owner must now adhere to stricter licensing conditions after nine bottles of illegal vodka were seized from his shelves.

Senior Trading Standards officer Graham Blount spotted several 70cl bottles of Glens Vodka featuring false duty paid stamps when he visited Deneburn Stores in Consett in February.

Follow up enquiries revealed the bottles were genuine but had been produced for export outside of the European Union and diverted at some point during the export process.

Today (Tuesday), Deneburn Stores owner Gapilrajh Sundarlingham appeared before Durham County Council’s statutory licensing sub-committee at County Hall in Durham City to fight to retain his premises licence.

Chris Cooper, from the council’s Local Weights and Measures Authority, said smuggled alcohol of this kind was often “hawked” around off-licences by criminals.

But Mr Sundarlingham’s solicitor Mark Davies said his client strongly refuted that the alcohol had been bought from an illegal source.

He said Mr Sundarlingham had only taken over the Deneburn Terrace off-licence last June, when he also bought leftover stock including boxes of alcohol.

“We are not in a position to say whether these bottles were bought by him at a cash and carry legitimately or whether they were already in the shop at the time he took over,” Mr Davies added.

The committee agreed to leave the licence in place but imposed stricter conditions.

Chairman, Councillor Colin Carr, said: “You must take this as a serious warning that your licence will be at risk if any similar material is found on the premises again.”