A man jailed for making and supplying fake identity documents must pay back more than a quarter of a million pounds.

Ukrainian national Oleksandr Sukhoviy, 43, was ordered to pay £289,992 at Kingston Crown Court on Monday (November 14), following a National Crime Agency investigation.

The agency says false documentation is used by serious criminals and organised crime groups to travel and operate undetected.

Sukhoviy now has three months to pay - or will get an extra three-year jail term and still owe the money.

Sukhoviy was jailed for six years at the same court in March 2019, after admitting conspiring to supplying false documents to commit fraud. He initially denied the charges but changed his plea just before his trial.

Sukhoviy was arrested by National Crime Agency officers at his home address in Slough in October 2018.

The arrest followed an investigation into an industrial-scale forgery factory operating in Stratford, East London.

The factory was run by fellow Ukrainian Sergiy Mykhaylov and was set up with computers and printers capable of producing tens of thousands of documents.

Mykhaylov ran an online business through which he received orders and would distribute documents to customers all over the UK.

In total, officers recovered more than 3,000 completed identity documents, 3,500 passport style photos and 300 Construction Skills Certificate Scheme (CSCS) cards, as well as 40,000 blank cards and £15,000 in cash.

Sukhoviy was one of several individuals distributing documents for Mykhaylov, and £11,000 cash in various currencies was discovered at his home.

He became the fifth conviction linked to the forgery gang, with jail sentences totalling more than 27 years having been handed out.

As part of the parallel financial investigation, the NCA established that Sukhoviy used accounts in other names, as shown by bank cards found in his wallet at the time of his arrest.

Phone numbers attributed to Sukhoviy proved he was associated to other accounts in third party names, some of whom had flown to the UK to open the account before flying out the same or the next day.

Many of the accounts were financed by cash and from building companies, believed to have been processing potential fraudulent construction industry scheme payments.

The confiscation order relates to property in the UK and Spain, a Rolex watch, cash restrained in bank accounts and cash seized at the time of arrest.