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

Mr Nielsen was the sole SKAT employee with responsibility for the processing of WHT refund claims using the Form Scheme, including the 4,170 claims with which I am concerned. He committed an unrelated fraud against SKAT, for which he served a prison sentence in Denmark; and I considered that he was not truthful with the court in evidence he gave during cross-examination about what were evidently studied attempts on his part to avoid Mr Ekstrand’s enquiries when the matters the subject of these proceedings were under investigation. That topic aside, however, I judged that he was being straightforward, open and as helpful as he could be in cross-examination, and I consider that he was being generally trustworthy in his oral evidence at trial. Its principal value was in demonstrating the gulf between, on the one hand, SKAT’s pleaded case on reliance and the witness statement evidence Mr Nielsen signed and adopted as his evidence in chief, which could have been taken to support that case, and the reality, on the other hand, of the very limited processing task he performed.