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

Mr Preston had no experience or knowledge of equity trading markets, let alone sophisticated aspects such as div-arb, cum-ex, or tax-structured trading. He was a professional golfer first, then a property consultant working for IPG so that Sanjay Shah became a client of his as a result of Mr Shah’s extensive portfolio of property investments. He became involved as part of the Malaysian extension of the Solo Model activity. A real difficulty in cross-examination was that many important questions rather assumed at least a basic understanding of what a dividend is, and what therefore a withholding tax is or might be, that I do not consider Mr Preston has now or ever had.

Mr Preston’s essential case throughout is that he trusted that Solo / GSS, the employed trader (Rebecca Robson for 2014 trading, Niall O’Carroll in 2015), and his co-venturers Garry Hope and Tim Murphy (especially the former) knew what they were doing and therefore collated and provided whatever was needed for the making of a tax refund claim to SKAT. That meant that he gave no thought to how Danish tax law worked, to what would be being said to the Danish tax authority in or by the making of tax refund claims, or to what CANs said or might be taken to mean. In Mr Preston’s case, I find that case to be credible and true.

Mr Preston was, in my view, mostly trustworthy in his evidence. He was essentially straightforward, clear and candid. If he did not remember things, he said so rather than pretending otherwise. The way he was questioned sometimes meant that took a while to come out, but I consider that not to be his fault. As with every other participant in Solo Model trading, Mr Preston was party to pretence, obfuscation and collateral dishonesty in connection with the trading activity, or when dealing with the profits from it. He was generally unwilling to accept that there was anything wrong with those aspects of what he did; and that did him no credit. There were also some confused elements to his factual account, and a few that I assessed him to be inventing in the witness box. Some caution is therefore required not too readily to treat what Mr Preston said for himself as honest testimony; but, stated generally, I do not consider that he was untrustworthy in his evidence.