Success in Multi-Million Pound Confiscation Case At Kingston Crown Court
Kangs Solicitors represented a client in confiscation proceedings at Kingston Upon Thames. The case related to a particular type of fraud referred to as Missing Trader Intra Community (MTIC) fraud or carousel fraud and is essentially theft of VAT from the Treasury. It was the HMRC case that the total amount of VAT repaid in relation to this fraud over a 2-year period was in the region of £86 million.
In the confiscation proceedings the prosecution alleged that our client had benefited from the fraud to the value of £1 million and that he had access to hidden assets amounting to almost £500,000, which would result in up to 5 years imprisonment should the client fail to pay this sum back. However, after over 18 months of working on the case which included enquiries being made by us both in the UK and a number of overseas jurisdictions, we were able to present cogent arguments to persuade both the prosecution and the court that the original sums being claimed by HMRC against our client were vastly inflated. Indeed, as a result of our forensic analysis of the client’s finances going back many years, we were able to demonstrate that the prosecution basis for alleging ‘hidden assets’ was flawed.
As a result HMRC conceded that there were no hidden assets in this case and we agreed a significantly reduced Confiscation Order of £36,000 on the client’s behalf. This was a considerable achievement compared to the starting position taken by HMRC in this case.
The case was conducted by Hamraj Kang and Frances Murray of Kangs. Frances commented at the conclusion of the case:
The client was very distressed with the prospect of a 5 year term of imprisonment should he fail to prove he did not have hidden assets. He was delighted with the outcome of the confiscation proceedings and thanked his legal team throughout for their hard work and dedication to his case. This was just reward for painstakingly dismantling the vast majority of the prosecution case
