Open Editor's Digest for free
Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
A British hedge fund trader at the heart of Europe's sprawling dividend scandal has been sentenced by a Danish court to 12 years in prison for defrauding the Scandinavian country of 9 billion Danish kroner ($1.3 billion).
Sanjay Shah, who was Delivered from Dubai Last year, he was the mastermind behind a scheme that led to the recovery of billions of euros in profits taxes that were never paid, Danish judges found.
The court also ordered the confiscation of 7.2 billion Danish kroner from Shah, who said immediately after the ruling on Thursday that he would appeal the ruling.
Several European countries, including Denmark, Germany, Italy and France, were hardest hit by the former vice president's scandal in the 2000s. Prosecutors in Germany are investigating 1,500 people over the scandal, while Denmark claims it was defrauded of a total of about 13 billion Danish kroner and has brought charges against nine defendants.
Shah has denied any wrongdoing, arguing that he only exploited loopholes in Danish law in order to get his money.
The trader and his hedge fund Solo Capital Partners are also in trouble British civil suit Submitted by the Danish Tax Agency to recover £1.4 billion in refunds.
The case was described by a judge in London as “one of the largest and most complex lawsuits” ever heard in the UK commercial courts with Skat, the Danish tax authority, providing about 250,000 pages of documents.
The 12-year prison sentence for Shah on charges of fraud is the largest in Denmark for an economic crime.
In an interview broadcast shortly after his sentencing, Shah told Danish television station TV2 that he was a “greedy bastard” and that withdrawing money from the Danish treasury was like “a game of Space Invaders”, as he wanted to beat up his former star. a result.
The court is in Glostrup outside Copenhagen Found He had a “central and controlling role in a crime that was carefully planned and systematically organised”, with thousands in paybacks made from the profits.
She added that the three-year duration of the offence, the facts that Shah had personally enriched himself and that his actions only ended when tax authorities withheld payments in 2015 due to suspected fraud, all meant there were “particularly aggravating circumstances”, leading to To impose the harshest prison sentence possible.
Preben Bang Henriksen, a lawmaker for the ruling Liberal Party and also its legal spokesman, praised the ruling as showing “harsh punishment awaits you when you steal from Denmark.”
Shah had argued that it was impossible for him to get a fair trial in Denmark after a number of members of the government commented on the case, including Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who welcomed the extradition of the Briton as a sign that “you cannot get away with Stay outside.”
