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

The position is different for Mr Dhorajiwala. Again, it was admitted that if he had thought the dividend entitlement, dividend payment, or tax representation, or in each case a representation to the same essential effect, was being made to SKAT, he would have known that SKAT was being given a falsehood. That is because those representations, as pleaded, are tied to what Mr Dhorajiwala, like Mr Horn and Rajen Shah, would have thought of as a traceability (of rights or payments) down to VPS or the Danish company that he, like they, knew was not present in the Solo Model or Maple Point Model trading. However, the tax ownership representation is not, on its own terms, necessarily so tied. I accept Mr Dhorajiwala’s evidence that he trusted Mr Horn and Rajen Shah to have taken sufficient external legal advice – here, so far as material, Danish tax law advice – to be comfortable that the trading did or might generate entitlements. Mr Graham KC put to Mr Dhorajiwala, implying criticism, that the gist of his evidence on the point was “Not me, guv”; but the criticism was unwarranted. Mr Dhorajiwala’s fair answer was “It wasn’t my responsibility to do that, so no [i.e. he agreed it was ‘not him’]”, and in my judgment there was and is no basis for considering that it was Mr Dhorajiwala’s responsibility or that he should not have trusted Mr Horn and Rajen Shah.