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

Fecha: 02-Oct-2025

Result (except SKAT vs. Syntax)

Result (except SKAT vs. Syntax)

610.

Syntax is in a different position to all other trial defendants, because in its case liability to SKAT stands established by a default judgment (see paragraph 615ff below).

611.

In relation to all trial defendants other than Syntax, the result of the conclusions set out above is that, in summary, and subject to paragraph 612 below:

(i)

the 4,170 tax refund claims that are the subject matter of claims brought by SKAT in these proceedings were all invalid claims under Danish tax law, in the sense that in each case the Tax Agent’s named client on whose behalf the Tax Agent submitted the claim was not entitled to any tax refund from SKAT, and SKAT had no obligation to pay the claim;

(ii)

SKAT paid those claims, however, without being influenced by any of the representations that it alleged were made to it, such that it was not induced by any such representations, which (effectively speaking) were not made to it anyway;

(iii)

since (as SKAT rightly accepted) every cause of action pursued through closing argument at trial is a cause of action governed by English law that requires SKAT to have proved that it was induced to pay claims by one or more of the misrepresentations it alleged, all of SKAT’s claims fail and stand to be dismissed;

(iv)

whatever view might be taken of the rights or wrongs of what happened, assessed against some other benchmark, the only question for decision in this court was whether any of the particular causes of action that SKAT asserted in this litigation, to the extent finally pursued at trial, was well founded, and my decision is that none of them was.

612.

That all has to be qualified, however, because of the present non-existence of some of the SSDs. As noted in Appendix 1 below and paragraph 38 above, at the date of this judgment Ampersand, Elysium Properties, Skyfall, Skyfall Holdings, Woodfields, and Woodfields Holdings all stand struck off in their respective jurisdictions of incorporation. That was the position throughout the Main Trial, and indeed since before the Validity Trial in January/February 2023. That means in turn that although I have referred to them as trial defendants, strictly none of them is before the court and I cannot make, and am not making, any decision affecting them. Moreover, the position may be complicated further by the fact that they were struck off after my decision, but before the Court of Appeal’s decision, on the Revenue Rule Trial.

613.

The upshot is that there will now be judgment dismissing all of SKAT’s claims against all trial defendants listed in Appendix 1 other than (i) Syntax, dealt with immediately below, and (ii) the six corporate SSDs listed immediately above. I shall ask for the assistance of counsel for SKAT, and counsel for the SSDs (if they consider it possible and proper to make any submissions), as to what, if anything, the court can or should now do in relation to those six SSDs. I shall also require assistance in relation to defendants who were not trial defendants but who are still parties to the proceedings against whom they have not yet been finally determined (for example defendants, if there are any, against whom stays are in place that will now come to an end or be affected in some other way by the handing down of this judgment).

614.

In that circumstance, I have not lengthened the main body of this judgment by setting out conditional conclusions of fact and law that might have determined, trial defendant by trial defendant, whether any (and if so which) of SKAT’s claims would have succeeded, had SKAT established the major premise for all of them, viz. that in each case it was induced to pay the invalid tax refund claim(s) the subject matter of the claim by one or more of the misrepresentations it alleged. I have done that to a certain extent in Appendix 7, below, principally to identify findings of fact as to trial defendants’ knowledge or understanding at the time, but more briefly than I would have done had the points considered been decisive, in case what I would have found may be said by any party to matter in relation to costs or any other consequential matter that may now arise.