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

The question arises whether Mr Shah took himself down that dead end in his evidence because he knows that at the time he did think SKAT was being told by the CANs, falsely, that the reported payment was net of tax withheld by the issuer (in the sense SKAT alleges, paragraph 509ff of the main body of this judgment again), for some other identifiable reason, or for no particular reason other than a propensity towards trying to talk his way out of things and not telling things straight when doing so. SKAT relied on the natural sense of the CANs being to the effect of the tax representation, which I have not accepted, and on an isolated answer Mr Shah gave that a “DKK DCA Tracker” spreadsheet maintained by the GSS team at his request existed, as Mr Goldsmith KC put it in asking the question, “to track the amounts of tax to be reclaimed from SKAT as set out in the DCAs”.