CL-2018-000297, CL-2018-000404, CL-2018-000590, - [2025] EWHC 2364 (Comm)

Fecha: 02-Oct-2025

As it happens, I do not draw that inference, and I judged Mr Fletcher’s evidence on that point to be truthful and supported by the contemporaneous documents, that is to say his evidence that concealme

49.

As it happens, I do not draw that inference, and I judged Mr Fletcher’s evidence on that point to be truthful and supported by the contemporaneous documents, that is to say his evidence that concealment from Mr Murphy, not from regulators or tax authorities, was the reason advice was taken from Barnes Roffe on using a BVI company “so as to ensure that third parties cannot get the financial information”. The present point, however, is that the inference that SKAT said should be drawn went nowhere in the Annex:

(i)

The Wappineer story was set out, at unnecessary length, as detail said to prove that by December 2014, Messrs Fletcher and Devonshire expected to be paid US$20m, of which US$780,000 had already been paid, and that the balance of US$19.22m was paid to them through their corporate vehicles in the summer of 2015. A reference to the transcripts where that was dealt with in cross-examination would have sufficed.

(ii)

The claim of untruthful evidence, and the suggested inference about concealment from SKAT, was no part of that proof, but appeared in the middle of it.

(iii)

The fact allegedly to be inferred that Mr Fletcher made use of an offshore corporate structure in order to conceal receipts from regulators and tax authorities such as SKAT made no other appearance in the Annex. It was not said to be a matter from which any state of mind alleged by SKAT against Mr Fletcher was to be inferred, in its deceit or conspiracy claims. It was not even relied on in support of the allegation that Mr Fletcher’s assistance, as alleged by SKAT, in what were said to have been breaches of constructive trusts arising in respect of the indirect proceeds of fraud, was dishonest. For that, the only point relied on that related to Wappineer and its subsidiaries was the different point that Mr Fletcher caused Ganymede or the mini-Ganymedes to be invoiced on a false basis.

50.

It was therefore harder work, and took longer, to consider SKAT’s factual case, as part of reaching my decisions in the case and preparing this judgment, than it would have been if the Annexes had been better structured and focused. For a number of the defendants, in what follows I have sought to distil from SKAT’s relevant Annex a concise but sufficient summary of at least the main elements of the case put by SKAT in closing. In each case, though, to be clear, I had regard to the entirety of the relevant Annex when considering my findings. I have not attempted, however, as part of that, to satisfy myself that SKAT only took in closing points on the facts that were open to it on the pleadings. That is potentially favourable to SKAT, and if its claims had not failed in any event at a prior stage in the analysis, I would have wanted to give that closer scrutiny, as regards every defendant, but especially as regards those litigating in person.