TC09659 - [2025] UKFTT 01211 (TC)

The documents to which we were referred were a bundle of 2131 pages, an authorities bundle of 975 pages and five videos. On the final day of the hearing, we were given on behalf of the Appellants a chronology of 2 pages and a note of evidence of 12 pages; and on behalf of HMRC a chronology of 5 pages. Neither party made any objection to these additional submissions. While the papers given to us on the final day of the hearing were helpful because they clarified the respective arguments each party was putting forwards, we treated them with appropriate caution since these documents were not evidence as such; in particular we relied on our own notes of the oral evidence given during the hearing rather than the Appellants’ “note of evidence” which was simply Miss Sheldon’s notes of the evidence given during the hearing, rather than being a transcript.

We also had the benefit of skeleton arguments from the Appellants of 13 pages (updated on the final day of the hearing to 15 pages) and the Respondents of 36 pages.

The Tribunal heard the evidence in the following order from the parties’ witnesses, each of whom was cross-examined by the opposing party’s representative:

At several points in giving his evidence, SF asserted that there were documents and WhatsApp messages that were not in the bundle before us, which would be supportive of his evidence. We deal with this point below.

In our factual findings we preferred to rely upon the contemporaneous documentary evidence and on the oral evidence where corroborated by that documentary evidence. Where oral evidence on factual matters was not so corroborated, we exercised some caution in deciding whether or not it was credible (given the well known human tendency to remember things partially), taking into account the plausibility of the evidence and its consistency with other evidence. We exercised particular caution in relation to oral evidence on factual matters where the witness was not a first-hand witness to the relevant events (for example KG and SF’s evidence on how BTL came to be introduced to SKM). When it came to matters of opinion (for example Officer Pathak’s opinion as to what was the typical trading model of a broker) we listened carefully but did not give the opinion particularly significant weight since the witnesses were not appearing before us as experts.