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

Mr Oakley was not a trustworthy witness. In my judgment, he was another who was willing to deny, and repeatedly denied, anything he thought that SKAT wanted to use against him, without reference to whether the suggested matter of fact was accurate and/or known to Mr Oakley at the time. He also cloaked much of his oral evidence by a slightly farcical adherence to jargon about what he was doing as a short seller in the Solo Model trading world. His approach to giving evidence, allied to an evident unreliability of recollection given the passage of time, rendered his testimony, in my judgment, of no material value to the court. It was not my assessment of Mr Oakley, however, that he was trying to cover for a contemporaneous awareness that he is unwilling now to admit that deceit was being practised upon SKAT through the Solo div-arb model in which he and Mr Mitchell were participating.