Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

UT (Tax & Chancery) UT/2022/000099 - [2024] UKUT 00184 (TCC)

Fecha: 24-Abr-2024

The FTT’s findings about Mr Donaldson

The FTT’s findings about Mr Donaldson

47.

The FTT made the following findings about Mr Donaldson’s dishonesty:

(1)

Despite his denials, Mr Donaldson actually knew the Magee/PCB deals were connected to fraud: see the detailed findings at [122] to [133].

(2)

His evidence about the credit and contract limits for the Irwin deals was untrue. He had said he did not think those limits posed a risk, but the FTT held at [106] that “[w]e do not consider that evidence to have been truthful: there was an obvious risk where the Appellant was doing dozens of deals with Irwin coming to hundreds of thousands of pounds”.

(3)

Mr Donaldson had alleged that HMRC’s witnesses were lying about Irwin’s Intrastat records, despite having already obtained those records. He therefore knew the allegation he had made was wrong. When Mr Puzey put to him in cross-examination that “it was not honest to allege that HMRC’s witnesses were lying”, Mr Donaldson said he meant only to accuse Irwin of dishonesty. The FTT characterised this response as “unimpressive and evasive”, see [53].

(4)

Although Mr Donaldson denied knowing that the Irwin deals were connected with fraud, the FTT did not believe him, see[96].

48.

In addition, the FTT found other parts of Mr Donaldson’s evidence to be unreliable, unsatisfactory and improvised, see [113], [114] and [111]. In relation to his conduct of the litigation, the FTT found at [54] that he had engaged in “a misguided game of forensic ‘hide and seek’” with HMRC rather than “putting his cards fairly and candidly on the table”, and had also not been “candid” with the FTT. In the Costs Decision, Judge McNall summarised the position by saying that the FTT Decision was “pervaded with comments which were adverse to Mr Donaldson's credibility”.