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

It was common ground between SKAT and the DWF Ds that if Mr Horn or Rajen Shah thought at the time that the core representations would be and were being made to SKAT, then he would have known them to be falsehoods, as regards each of the dividend entitlement, dividend payment and tax representations.

As regards the tax ownership representation, it was submitted by the DWF Ds that Mr Horn and Rajen Shah each held a positive belief concerning Danish tax law, based on the First HS Advice, such as to have made the representation, in their mind at the time, essentially true. I do not accept that. They had no good reason for any such belief, indeed (as I am confident they knew at the time) they had not sought advice that might be capable of providing a basis for such a belief. Further, it was apparent to them from their correspondence with Hannes Snellman in the course of obtaining the First HS Advice that if such advice were sought from Hannes Snellman, it would very probably be negative.

Mr Horn’s and Rajen Shah’s unwillingness now to acknowledge any of that did them no credit. It betrayed them as not honest enough to trust the court with a true account of their approach at the time as part of the factual basis for any judgment as to liability. Their true positive defence on the facts, which I would have been content, on balance, to accept despite my significant misgivings about their evidence, was that they did not think at the time that representations such as SKAT alleged were made to SKAT. They should not have succumbed to the pressure I consider the litigation led them to feel to say that they had a well-researched belief that the Solo Model and Maple Point Model trading did generate refund entitlements under Danish tax law. But my conclusion was not, and is not, that they succumbed to that pressure because they in fact knew or believed that they had played a part in SKAT being defrauded, i.e. tricked through misinformation in the tax reclaim documents.