A Danish court on Thursday (12) sentenced a British hedge fund trader to 12 years in prison for defrauding Danish tax authorities out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
Sanjay Shah, who denied the charges, was convicted of running a nine-billion-krone (£1.03 billion) scam that enabled companies he controlled to fraudulently claim Danish tax refunds between 2012 and 2015.
The court also ordered that Shah be deported from Denmark on completion of his sentence, and that assets worth 7.2 billion kroner (£820 million) be confiscated.
The court said it considered "the nature, scope, seriousness and extent of the offences", when deciding the sentence.
Shah wished reporters a "Merry Christmas" as he showed up to court wearing a Santa hat, before receiving the harshest sentence ever handed out in Denmark for financial crimes, broadcaster DR reported.
At the last hearing in September, he assured the court that he had acted in good faith.
Kare Pihlmann, Shah's lawyer, said that they were appealing the verdict, Danish media reported.
During the trial, which began in May after an almost 10-year investigation, the prosecution showed that dummy companies controlled by Shah pretended to own shares in Danish companies and received tax rebates for which they were not eligible.
Prosecutors said they had identified more than 3,000 such requests using what they described as a "well-designed and organised fraud scheme".
In January 2021, when the indictment was announced, the prosecutor's office said it had already seized some £340m.
In May 2023, a Dubai court ordered Shah to pay Denmark's tax authority more than $1.2bn (£950m), and another related trial is also underway in Britain.
The United Arab Emirates extradited Shah, who was living in Dubai, to Denmark in December of 2023, after years of negotiations which included the signing of an extradition treaty between the two countries in March 2022.
So-called "cum-ex" and "cum-cum" scams, which take advantage of a loophole in European tax laws, have been uncovered in several EU countries.
The schemes involve buying and selling shares around the time of dividend payments, so quickly that the tax authorities are unable to identify the true owner, making it possible to illegally claim tax credits on profits.
According to Bloomberg estimates, the scams have cost European taxpayers up to $157bn (£124bn).
(AFP)
