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

The Authority opened an investigation into Mr Tinney, and on 26 September 2014, Mr Kalaris was interviewed in connection with that investigation by Ms Yasmin Yazdani and Mr Harsh Trivedi of the Authority. Mr Kalaris was accompanied by two solicitors from Ashurst LLP, Ms Hollie Motley and Mr Edward Sparrow.

The 2014 Interview was conducted under FSMA s 172; by subsection (2), an investigator may require a person who is not under investigation, or connected with the person under investigation to “attend before the investigator at a specified time and place and answer questions”. It was thus a “compelled” interview, and Mr Kalaris was given the same warning about the consequences of failing “to comply fully” with the statutory requirement that he answer the questions put to him as he had been given in advance of the 2013 Interview.

Mr Kalaris was subsequently provided with a copy of a draft transcript of the 2014 Interview. As well as being asked to make any typographical corrections, he was invited to provide any additional comments for the Authority’s consideration. He returned the transcript on 29 October 2014 and the passages quoted below are taken from the finalised transcript.

In the course of the 2014 Interview, Mr Kalaris said that the first time he was aware of the GenVen Report was when he was shown a copy at the meeting on 17 December 2012. The exchanges were as follows:

“Mr Kalaris: And I did not know of the Genesis report until I came, until it was shown to me by Antony and Mark Harding two weeks later, some...

Ms Yazdani: Yes

Mr Kalaris: Whenever the – whenever it kind of came by, 17th, 20th, one of those days.

Ms Yazdani: Okay. So if I can use this expression, when were you brought
over the wall on this issue?

Mr Kalaris: So if I have the date right – I think its 17^thof December…[it was a] nine o’clock meeting. They showed me the – I think it was a blue deck and said ‘Have you seen this before?’ and I said ‘No. And that was the
first time I was aware of – that there was a Genesis report.”