British businessman Sanjay Shah jailed for 12 years over £996m Danish tax fraud

The British businessman Sanjay Shah has been sentenced to 12 years in jail for fraud in opposition to the Danish state – the longest sentence for a monetary crime within the nation’s historical past.

Glostrup court docket on Thursday discovered Shah responsible of gross fraud, ruling that he performed a “central and controlling function” in a serious tax fraud of greater than 9bn DKK (£996m) involving dividend tax refunds.

The case began in August 2015 when Danish tax authorities found that billions had been illegally claimed from the treasury.

Along with the 12-year jail sentence, which is three years longer than the earlier Danish document for monetary crime, Shah may also be expelled from the nation and banned from operating a enterprise.

He may also have 7.2bn DKK seized – the determine that the prosecution was capable of show he had gained from the fraud. To this point, Danish police have seized about 3bn DKK.

Shah, 54, denied committing a felony offence, claiming he was merely exploiting a loophole in Danish tax guidelines. However the court docket dismissed his defence, saying he was not entitled to the quantity he claimed.

The court docket mentioned the size of sentence was supposed to replicate the extent and the seriousness of the crime, which it mentioned occurred between 2012 and 2015.

The decision said that “the 54-year-old’s central and controlling function within the crime, which was fastidiously deliberate and systematically organised and additional streamlined alongside the way in which by growing a software program system, meant that the crime escalated dramatically”.

Shah instantly appealed in opposition to the decision. He’ll stay in custody till the attraction verdict is reached within the excessive court docket, because the court docket believes he’s a flight danger.

Till he was extradited in December 2023, after a prolonged extradition course of, the British financier had been residing in Dubai.

In March, his affiliate Anthony Mark Patterson, additionally British, confessed to involvement in a 8.4m DKK dividend tax fraud, for which he was sentenced to eight years in jail. Guenther Klar, one other affiliate, was sentenced to 6 years in jail in February after being charged with defrauding the treasury of 320m DKK.