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

For the tax ownership representation, SKAT submitted that Mr Shah had not disputed in cross-examination that he thought a Solo Model CAN conveyed that the client to whom it was issued had a shareholding on the dividend declaration date. I think that is a fair characterisation of Mr Shah’s evidence; but that was not the representation alleged, or its essence, which was a statement about share ownership for Danish tax purposes. Mr Shah’s evidence was in any event qualified, as to be fair SKAT acknowledged, in that he said, in effect, that given the context he thought any statement about share ownership in a Solo Model CAN referred to beneficial ownership. SKAT submitted that this was “doubtful in the light of the wording of the [CANs], which does not mention beneficial ownership, although the Tax Refund Form does refer to “beneficial owner”.”

My concerns about his credibility notwithstanding, I accept Mr Shah’s evidence that at the time he had in his head a notion that the equivalence, in economic effect, of a sale purchase to a shareholding, from the trade date in markets like Denmark where that was the convention, was a kind of ‘beneficial ownership’ such as DTTs had in mind. His idea was quite mistaken, but genuinely held. It was also, I find, Mr Klar’s wrongheaded, but genuine, idea at the time; likewise for Rajen Shah and Mr Horn.