Trader loses last fight to kick out $1.8 bn UK dividend tax fraud case

By Katharine Gemmell

Hedge fund founder Sanjay Shah lost his last-ditch attempt at the UK’s top court to stop a £1.44 billion ($1.8 billion) trial over Cum-Ex tax dividend trades.
 

The Supreme Court rejected Shah’s lawyers’ claims that London isn’t the proper place for Danish tax agency Skatteforvaltningen to bring its claim over the trading strategy that siphoned off billions of government revenue. 

Shah had previously won the argument at a lower court before the court of appeal sided with the agency, known as Skat. The civil trial, which also involves scores of other traders, is scheduled to go ahead in April and is set to last one year.

Shah’s lawyers had argued the claim shouldn’t take place in the UK because matters of foreign tax law can’t be ruled on there.

However “the applications for refunds were all based on a lie that the applicants had paid tax in the first place which, on the respondent’s pleaded case, they had not,” Judge David Lloyd Jones said in a ruling handed down Wednesday.

Shah, founder of Solo Capital Partners LLP, has emerged as a key figure in the scandal over alleged tax fraud that has engulfed multiple European countries. Dozens of bankers, traders and lawyers have been charged in Denmark and Germany over the use of Cum-Ex trades to obtain millions of euros worth of duplicate tax refunds.

The decision is a further blow to Shah’s fortunes. He’s currently in a Dubai waiting to be extradited from the United Arab Emirates to Denmark. Shah’s Danish criminal trial has been postponed while his extradition is organized. Shah, who also faces a trial in Germany, has consistently maintained his innocence.

A spokesperson for the Danish tax agency said it is looking forward to the main trial taking place.

Jack Irvine, a spokesperson for Shah, said he hadn’t seen the judgment yet and declined to comment.