Upper Tribunal Tax and Chancery Chamber

UT (Tax & Chancery) UT-2022-0000150 - [2024] UKUT 00254 (TCC)

Fecha: 10-Jul-2024

Q4: The Tribunal’s findings

Q4: The Tribunal’s findings

169.

Q4 was (our emphasis) “was there any connection between either the Agreement or the fees paid under it and the Qataris’ participation in the capital raising”. Mr Beauchamp did not ask “was there a legal connection”.

170.

Mr Kalaris responded by saying “No. Not in my view”. He did not qualify his answer, or say “there is a factual connection” or “there is no legal connection”. He gave a one line, unequivocal answer.

171.

We do not accept Mr Kalaris’s evidence that he gave that response because he had understood Mr Beauchamp already to be aware of the factual connection between the ASA and the capital raising, because:

(1)

We have already found (see §124ff) that the Authority did not know before the 2013 Interview:

(a)

that the ASA and the Qataris’ contribution to the capital raising were “factually connected because they formed a “package” under which the ASA filled the “value gap” between the 1.5% and the 3.5% required by the Qataris; or

(b)

that the Qataris would not have participated in the capital raising had Barclays not met the value gap.

(2)

We have also already found (see §127) that, at the time of the 2013 Interview, Mr Kalaris did not believe the Authority was already aware of those connections between the ASA and the capital raising.

(3)

Nowhere in the earlier part of the 2013 Interview did Mr Beauchamp say that the Authority knew the two were factually connected, and none of Mr Kalaris’s responses to those earlier questions provided the Authority with that information. Mr Kalaris sought to rely on his response to Q1 with its reference to two paths, but he said there were two separate paths, and that was not the position.

(4)

Mr Kalaris is not a lawyer, and there is no suggestion anywhere in the transcript that Mr Beauchamp was asking for Mr Kalaris’s opinion on the legality of what had happened. It is not credible that Mr Kalaris thought Q4 was “Was there a legal connection between either the Agreement or the fees paid under it and the Qataris’ participation in the capital raising”.

172.

The Authority’s position was that Mr Kalaris had deliberately given an untrue answer to Q4, and Mr Winter rightly recognised that this was an accusation of dishonesty. In Ivey v Genting Casinos UK Ltd [2017] UKSC 67 at [74], Lord Hughes said:

“When dishonesty is in question the fact finding tribunal must first ascertain
(subjectively) the actual state of the individual’s knowledge or belief as to the facts. The reasonableness or otherwise of his belief is a matter of evidence (often in practice determinative) going to whether he held the belief, but it is not an additional requirement that his belief must be reasonable; the question is whether it is genuinely held. When once his actual state of mind as to knowledge or belief as to facts is established, the question whether his conduct was honest or dishonest is to be determined by the fact-finder by applying the (objective) standards of ordinary decent people. There is no requirement that the defendant must appreciate that what he has done is, by those standards, dishonest.”

173.

Mr Kalaris was asked a simple and straightforward question, to which he knew the answer was “yes”. He nevertheless replied “No. Not in my view”. We find that his reply was dishonest by the standards of ordinary decent people.