Hedge Fund trader Sanjay Shah lost a last-ditch attempt at the UK’s top court to stop a £1.44 billion ($1.8 billion) trial with Danish tax officials over Cum-Ex tax dividend trades going ahead in London.
The UK’s Supreme Court rejected Shah’s lawyers claims that the country was not the proper place for 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 but the court of appeal had sided with Skat. The civil trial, which also involves scores of other traders, is scheduled ahead in April and is set to last one year — one of the longest in the court’s history.
Shah’s lawyers had argued the claim shouldn’t take place in the UK because matters of foreign tax law cannot be ruled on here. 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 further blow to Shah’s fortunes who is 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 and also faces a trial in Germany. Shah has consistently maintained his innocence.
Spokespeople for Shah and Skat didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
