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

Fecha: 02-Oct-2025

That does not mean that he or Mr Oakley realised at the time that they were involved in share-less share trading, let alone in fraud being practised on SKAT (if it was). I am satisfied in both respect

54.

That does not mean that he or Mr Oakley realised at the time that they were involved in share-less share trading, let alone in fraud being practised on SKAT (if it was). I am satisfied in both respects that Mr Mitchell did not realise that; and I do not think there is any reason to suppose that Mr Oakley knew more than Mr Mitchell or understood things differently at the time. The unsatisfactory elements of his evidence notwithstanding, I accept as truthful and reliable Mr Mitchell’s evidence that:

(i)

when he and Mr Oakley were briefly on the ‘long’ side of the Solo Model through their pension fund, trading around Austrian ex-dates, and made an Austrian dividend tax refund claim, via Acupay, he did so without forming any positive view one way or the other as to whether there was a refund entitlement, because he did not see that as necessary, but rather “… we just tested, we didn’t take any advice, we just tested the trade, it didn’t work and that was it. We didn’t take any legal or tax advice or anything like that”, his reference to the trade not working being to the fact that the Austrian tax authority rejected the tax refund claim;

(ii)

when he and Mr Oakley were on the ‘short’ side of the Solo Model, which was their substantial involvement in Solo Model trading and their only involvement as regards trading around Danish ex-dates, he did not think at the time about anything more than their parts of the trading, not because he was closing his eyes to a suspicion he had that there was something untoward going on, but simply because he did not think it relevant or necessary to worry about the wider structure;

(iii)

he sees now how what he knew of the trading at the time might indicate that Solo had set things up such that there was or could be a settlement loop amongst buyers, sellers and stock lenders; but

(iv)

he did not at the time scrutinise the trading or think it through like that, he did not at the time realise that Solo was in fact operating a share-less settlement model, and as to that:

(a)

“in all my trading career at the time there has to be some shares, whether [viz., ‘even if’] it is a smaller amount and you can put it through different cycles to get to the right amount, you always have to have some shares”;

(b)

his reference there to ‘cycling’ was to something that was “hardly ever done” but was known to him as a possible way of solving a settlement issue, namely using a single parcel of shares to settle multiple trades on the same day, through settlement cycles at different times of the day; and

(c)

had he been told that Solo was operating the settlement loop methodology that in fact it was, he would have said that none of the parties ever had any shares, but also that “I didn’t realise you could actually do that”, and “I would have said we’re not doing the trade, we would need to have the shares”.