Denmark’s tax authority has lost a £1.4bn fraud case at the High Court in London in one of the highest value civil cases ever heard in the UK.
Skatterforvaltningen, known as Skat, argued huge sums of cash had been falsely claimed in tax rebates – as part of so-called “cum-ex schemes”.
The main named defendant in the case was defunct hedge fund Solo Capital Partners, run by trader Sanjay Shah, who was jailed in a criminal trial in Denmark last year.
Ruling on the case, Mr Justice Andrew Baker said the Danish tax authority had not been misled into making the payments.
The case was deciding on whether Skat was deceived into paying the tax refunds, as it had claimed.
“Greed can be a powerful motive, and I consider there was substantial greed here,” said Mr Justice Baker.
“However, the evidence at trial did not persuade me to accept Skat’s claim, and I do not make the findings it sought.”
The judgement noted that of the 4,170 dividend refund claims between mid-2012 and mid-2015 examined as part of the trial, none were valid claims under Danish tax law – and all of them could have been rejected.
However, Mr Justice Baker said the tax authority’s “controls for assessing and paying dividend tax refund claims were so flimsy as to be almost non-existent”.
He said Skat had “failed to established any of the claims pursued at trial where liability was disputed”.
In a statement, the Danish government said its tax authority “strongly disagrees with the premises of the judgment and is now seeking to appeal it”.
Credit: bbc.com
