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

Mr Baker gave generally fair and straightforward evidence. There were some errors in his chronology, but none that would cause concern as to whether he was doing his honest best to say what he could or could not remember. He was the first of what became a number of witnesses with whom, unfairly, points were pursued by SKAT in cross-examination that, if they mattered, should have been put to witnesses who had come before. For example, he was taken to task as to when he first met Mr Horn, when Mr Horn’s evidence on the point had been the same as Mr Baker’s and went unchallenged; and a new suggestion was put to Mr Baker that a drinks evening he attended in May 2015 was to celebrate the first receipts by Koi of tax reclaim amounts though no such suggestion was made either to Mr Horn or even to Mr Hogarth, cross-examined just the previous day and by the same cross-examiner.

I consider that Mr Baker was in general a trustworthy witness. There were two significant points, however, on which I am not comfortable he was being honest with the court. Firstly, he was, to his discredit, unwilling to accept even though it is perfectly obvious on the documents that he understood at the time that the sole purpose of the Lindisfarne CANs was to support a tax refund claim to be made by the buyer under the Maple Point Model trades in which Lindisfarne was involved. I am satisfied that he and Mr Hogarth, and therefore Lindisfarne as an entity, were well aware of that purpose and realised that their CANs would be and were being sent to SKAT in support of such claims.