[5] The previous CEO, Chris Tooley, was given a suspended prison sentence in 2023 for his involvement in an "elaborate money laundering system" in France.

Lycatel, also a part of Lyca Group, targets customers within expatriate and ethnic markets that want to make international calls.

[7] In October 2023, Lycamobile’s French companies were convicted of committing value-added tax (VAT) and money laundering fraud, subject to appeal, with a fine of €10 million.

[8] In Australia, as of December 2024, Lycamobile receive a rating of 2.3 out of 5 on ProductReviews.com.au, with category scores of 2.8 for value for money, 2.8 for customer service, 2.9 for local reception, and 2.5 for transparency.

Whilst there is a fair level of confusion between pricing, Lycatel's underlying charges are significantly less than connecting international calls in a conventional sense.

Lycatel primarily operates via its own national reselling companies or through its service providers in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, India (an outsourcing operation), Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States and Tunisia.

Lycatalk has less prominence than the Lycatel and Lycamobile brands but has a simply structured product with no set up fees or other maintenance charges.

Lycatalk tariff rates are more settled and rarely vary wildly, unlike more aggressively price structured products such as calling cards.

Ventures of note include the following: Lycamoney is a pre-paid debit card offering, enabling mainly new migrants to European countries to have access to payment schemes such as MasterCard.

[43] LycaFly is the travel arm of the Lyca business, and specialises in offering cheap flights and holidays to predominantly Asian destinations such as India and Sri Lanka as well Nigeria.

The UK LycaFly business, U Can Fly Limited, is owned by Pettigo Comércio Internacional, Limitada, a Portuguese holding company located in Madeira, Portugal.

In addition to the arrests, the police also seized €1m in raids on Lycamobile's Paris headquarters and a series of residential and business addresses across the city.

[50] The French court ruling was released on 26 October 2023, stating that the company had "knowingly participated in an elaborate money laundering system".

In January 2023 Okokrim, the Norwegian National Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime, sentenced two people to over two years in prison for complicity in a "particularly advanced and reprehensible" tax evasion scheme in connection with the sale of calling cards for Lycatel and Lycamobile in Norway in the period 2010–2016.

In this way, they contributed to the fact that the dealers failed to disclose commission income of a total of NOK 57.3 million to the tax authorities.

Lycamobile settled the claim for NOK 3.5 million, stating that the company did not have the necessary controls in place to prevent the activities committed by the convicts.

The raid resulted in the discovery of "incriminating" evidence reflecting loans and investments made without any due diligence or rationale into the Kallal Group by Pettigo Commercio Internacional LDA, a Portuguese subsidiary of Lycamobile.

Lycamobile unsuccessfully argued that by the use of a sister company in Ireland which provided services for commission, they were able to legally avoid paying the tax.

[56][57][58][59] Shortly after this ruling, in May 2021, Lycamobile Germany was renamed Amalasandan Dienstleistungen GmbH and soon afterward filed for insolvency, leaving very little for the authorities to recover.

According to the insolvency practitioner, Jan Roth, the company did not have a business address, the only employee was the then Group CEO, Chris Tooley, and he was unable to obtain any corporate documents.

[62] In July 2024, CEO Richard Schäfer and CFO Nikos Paraskevopoulos left the company amid the tax evasion crisis.

[63] In December 2024, following losses of over £25 million during their 2021/22 tax year,[64] combined with conflicts with HM Revenue and Customs on unpaid VAT bills of up to £51 million,[65] Lycamobile announced the risk of redundancy of up to 316 UK staff, bringing the total down to 48, after staff at their City of London headquarters were told the company was facing "pretty serious challenges".

[66] Lycamobile donated over £2m to the Conservative Party between 2011 and 2016, with Subaskaran Allirajah enjoying a close relationship with both David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

In 2019, the Labour Party described Johnson as "unfit" to be prime minister, following reports he attended a private dinner with Allirajah in an attempt to gain more funding in the run up to the 2019 General Election.

The auditor, PKF Littlejohn LLP, qualifies their audit opinion by stating that they have been unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence over the recoverability of a balance of £168,839,000 due from related parties (entities under common control) and balance of £18,083,000 due from directors and parties associated with directors, which is included in debtors on the statement of financial position as at 31 December 2021.

Whilst the Group CEO is listed as Richard Schafer, the most recent annual report published by Companies House for the year ended 31 December 2021 for Lycamobile UK Limited states that "The majority of the cash flows associated with investing and financing activities are ultimately either discretionary and/or with related parties under the control of Mr A Subaskaran".

The Company also carries out its airtime trading activities primarily within the United Kingdom, providing low-cost international calls which are marketed to residents originally from other countries through national advertising campaigns".

According to the filed accounts, the continuity of Thames Quay is dependent on loans from WWW Holding Company Limited, another related entity with the same Directors.

The auditor also states that it was not possible for "management" to provide them with evidence to support the net wealth of a related party associated with one of the directors and as a result, were unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence with respect of the recoverability of the £16 million loan to Mrs Subaskaran as well as an amount of £5.9 million for S455 tax that will be due when the amount due from related parties is repaid in full.

The auditors of Lycatel Services Limited, PKF Littlejohn, provided a qualified opinion on the accounts[81] and state that they were unable to obtain sufficient audit evidence relating to the recoverability of the employee loan receivables as it was not possible for management to provide them with sufficient evidence to support the net wealth of the employees to whom the company had advanced loans with an outstanding amount of £2,037,761.