Island-based global drinks firm Bacardi has clamped down on a brand scam run by a fraudster who billed himself “the baron of spirits”.

Mystery man Tofikuddin Ovaysi registered nearly 100 shell businesses in the UK using clone names of drinks producers — including Bermuda’s Bacardi.

But now the real Bacardi has taken action in England to have Mr Ovaysi’s Bacardi Ltd axed.

A spokeswoman for Bacardi, which operates in Britain as Bacardi UK Ltd, said: “We took action on this matter as soon as we became aware of it and we won.

“Bacardi is diligent in protecting its corporate and brand names and addresses any infringement on our intellectual property.”

The UK Company Names Adjudicator last November ordered that the bogus Bacardi change its name within a month — or it would be done for them.

Mr Ovaysi was also ordered not to use any company names that could be confused with existing companies.

Among the other drinks company names registered in the UK by Mr Ovaysi, said to be a Russian who lived in the Ukraine, were linked to reputable companies like Diageo, Pernod Ricard and whisky maker William Grant & Sons.

Most of the firms were registered last summer while he was living and working in the Ukraine, where he was wrongly reported to be the son of millionaire Vijay Mallya of India’s United Breweries. known as UB Group and the makers of Kingfisher Beer.

Mr Ovaysi opened what was thought to be the Ukrainian HQ of United Breweries in the provincial city of Ternopil last February, promising major investment and hundreds of jobs.

But he fled the city last September when his Ukrainian business, UB Groupe rather than UB Group, was declared bankrupt.

He built his fake drinks empire using £10 registrations of 96 clone companies at the British public registry, Companies House, using a mailbox address in London.

Some of his cloned companies, including United Breweries Group Ltd and Kingfisher Beer Ltd, remain on the UK register of companies.

The news has prompted calls by UK politicians to tighten up Britain’s company registration system.

Roger Mullin, an MP from Scotland, the home of Scotch whisky, said the Ovaysi case underlined the need for urgent reform of the company registration system.

Companies House has four million recorded firms as well as millions of directors, many of whom are thought to be falsely or inaccurately recorded.

Mr Mullin said: “Companies House simply doesn’t have the resource to properly investigate and administer registrations.

“This is making it much easier than it should be for rogue registrations and for dubious practices to go undetected.”

Companies House said it did not check new registrations for name infringements, but that it urged those applying for businesses to do so.

The organisation added that companies who believed their names had been stolen to appeal to Companies House to have the problem fixed.