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

The SSDs other than Sanjay Shah himself are 17 corporate entities and 6 now defunct such entities (see Appendix 1, above). Each either was at some material time or times indirectly ultimately owned and controlled by Sanjay Shah, or is now so owned and controlled. Many of them were so owned and controlled throughout, for example the Elysium entities and Ganymede. Some of the corporate SSDs involved in the Varengold Bank or Dero Bank acquisition were not under Sanjay Shah’s control so as to be affected by his state of mind for the purpose of establishing their liability, if any, to SKAT. In the table under paragraph 134 below, the ‘Directing Mind’ column relates to the period when any liability to SKAT would have been incurred by the corporate SSD in question rather than to the position now.

As explained in paragraphs 38 to 40 of the main body of this judgment: the six defunct corporate SSDs are Ampersand, Elysium Properties, Skyfall, Skyfall Holdings, Woodfields, and Woodfields Holdings; on the other hand, Colbrook, Ganymede and T&S, which were struck off the register in the Cayman Islands on 31 October 2022, have been restored to existence.

In addition, as the trial came to a close, SKAT and the SSDs were working towards agreeing terms the effect of which would be to avoid a need for separate consideration to be given to SKAT’s claims against Elysium Holdings, Elysium Property Holdings, Honey Jersey and Trillium Holdings, whatever the outcome of SKAT’s claims against Sanjay Shah personally or other SSDs.

The remaining ten corporate SSDs are AESA, Araya, Bellview, Elysium Dubai, Elysium Global, Elysium Trading, Hooloomooloo, PCM, Treefrog, and Trillium. None of those companies was involved in the Solo Model trading. All were said by SKAT to have become involved in one way or another in the use to which Sanjay Shah caused Ganymede to put the tax refund proceeds of that trading paid out by SKAT. It will be recalled that the Solo Model business was set up in such a way that Ganymede was the principal, indirect, recipient under Sanjay Shah’s control of profits derived from SKAT’s payments. For some of those SSDs, the practical purpose of the proceedings was questionable (at all events by the time of the Main Trial), given their material lack of assets:

Given the conclusions reached in the main body of this judgment, the possibility of the corporate SSDs having one or more of the liabilities variously alleged against them by SKAT does not now arise. In those circumstances, I have not lengthened this Appendix with a consideration of those alleged liabilities.