TC09667 - [2025] UKFTT 01254 (TC)

We found Mr Lothian to be a partial witness: who was keen to justify the conduct of his company. He seemed relatively unconcerned that the business had been used to facilitate the evasion of excise duty. He regarded the purpose of customer due diligence to be about protecting the business from default rather than involvement in nefarious activity. He appeared less knowledgeable of the day-to-day affairs of the business: for example Mr Lees stated that they no longer took cash, but Mr Lothian suggested they would in certain circumstances. Whilst we accept he did not seek to deliberately mislead the Tribunal, for the reasons detailed below, we find that he was unreliable when he asserted that identity documents for Chelsea Kelly had been deleted. Overall, we found him to be a less reliable witness.