A former Vantis director has been sentenced to
18 months in jail over £70m tax fraud.
David Perrin was a deputy managing tax
director and has been convicted by Blackfriars Crown Court in
January.
The sentence stated he devised and operated a
tax avoidance scheme which he sold to wealthy taxpayers in order to
exploit a law on giving shares to charity.
Through this scheme, he managed to pocket more
than £2m in fees from his clients that he spent on property,
expensive holidays, art and cars.
Between 2005 and 2006, Perrin advised more
than 600 wealthy clients to buy shares, worth a few pence each, in
four new companies he had set up.
These same companies were then listed on the
Channel Islands Stock Exchange and Perrin paid people money from an
offshore account to buy and sell the shares to inflate their
price.
The share owners donated 329 million shares to
registered charities and then claimed £70m tax relief on a total of
£213m of income and company profits. This was done on the basis the
shares should have been worth up to £1 each rather than the pennies
they were originally bought for.
Vantis, a consolidator, collapsed in 2010.
