DRUGS charge teen Bella Culley has been linked to a Chinese “mule directorship” scheme paying £550 to dodgy directors.
British backpacker Bella, 18, is in custody following her arrest in Georgia’s Tbilisi airport with a suitcase of cannabis after going missing 4,000 miles away in Thailand.
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She faces at least nine months on remand in a grim Soviet-era jail alongside hardened criminals after joking online of “Bonnie and Clyde” hijinks while showing off cash wads in the Far East.
But investigators have now unearthed odd business links unrelated to her alleged drug mule shame.
A fellow company director has told The Sun both he and Bella were hired by a local recruiter to handover passport details and sign paperwork in exchange for more than £500.
The practice allows Chinese firms to use a loophole to sell goods into the UK market via online giant Amazon.
It was unclear what the nature of Bella’s involvement in the Chinese company was today and her family have declined to comment.
UK Government officials refer to the process of selling your identity to become a listed director as “mule directorships”.
The fellow director – who asked not to be named – said: “Someone’s used my details to run a dodgy company, and now I’m being linked to a girl from Billingham who’s just been arrested for drug smuggling in Georgia.
“I don’t even know her, but somehow our names are connected on this company.
“Last year, some lads I knew were offering £550 to open Amazon business accounts.
“The idea was simple – you’d give them your passport and address, they’d set up an Amazon seller account in your name, and you’d get paid.
“What I didn’t realise was that these accounts are being sold to Chinese sellers who can’t open them themselves anymore because Amazon cut them off.
“Once the account is transferred, they are meant to take your name off it.
“Someone’s clearly scraped my information from that Amazon work and set me up as a director for a company I’ve never even heard of. I don’t even know how to get this fixed.”
The man claimed that hundreds of people in the Billingham and Stockton area of Teesside – where Culley is from – have been approached online and offered £550 for passport details.
A man calling himself Warren Bradbury, who lived in Darlington is believed to be the head of recruitment on behalf of Chinese businesses.
The man said: “He was the one who got loads of people round here signing up for this Amazon business account thing.
“He was all over Facebook, pushing it on his stories before his account kept getting banned.
“He was the one who’d come round with the laptop, get you on the video call to set up the Amazon account, and then hand over the cash. I’d see him pulling this routine all over Darlington and Middlesbrough.
“He’d meet people wherever they were – their mate’s house, a pub, whatever – as long as they had their passport and address ready. He had it all down to a system.
“He wasn’t working alone. There were other lads in London involved, plus a few contacts in China who were pulling the strings. They’d all take a slice before the accounts were sold on.
“I thought it was just a bit of cash on the side. I didn’t realise it would come back like this.”
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