Bodyguard to stars gets 4 years for tax dodging
Scot whose clients included Britney and Trump swindled £420,000
A CELEBRITY bodyguard was jailed for four years yesterday after cheating the taxman out of almost £420,000.
Kevin McKay, of Aberdeen, was charged with the fraudulent evasion of VAT after HMRC officers examined invoices he had sent to businesses from his security firm IPPS.
The 46-year-old charged his clients VAT but lied on his HMRC tax returns, claiming his business was making less than 10 per cent of the true total.
McKay – who has worked for celebrities including Britney Spears as well as Donald Trump and the Saudi royal family – transferred large sums from his business to his personal account then sent some of the money abroad.
More than £100,000 was transferred to a Romanian bank in September 2010.
HMRC officers detained McKay and searched his home, car and business premises. However, when he was charged he blamed his former wife Susan, a claim she strenuously denied in court.
McKay was found guilty after a trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court last month. The jury heard how IPPS provided mobile patrols at Trump’s golf resort in Aberdeenshire, with a total of 136 visits between 2008 and 2009 listed on an invoice.
Invoices from other firms were also examined and it emerged that incorrect figures had been submitted to HMRC.
Mrs McKay was initially charged with an offence relating to the reckless submission of VAT returns but the case against her was dropped.
HMRC officer Ross Brown told the court: ‘As far as she was concerned she was asked to sign a couple of documents for Kevin while he was serving a period of sequestration and genuinely appeared shocked at the level of figures we were talking about.’
Mr Brown said his colleagues did not suspect that she had played any part in the crime. McKay had put the business in her name while he served a period of sequestration but she was not involved in running the firm.
McKay was found guilty of evading VAT worth £419,799 between August 2008 and May 2014, and of removing criminal property from Scotland by transferring a total of £100,473 into a Romanian bank account. He was remanded in custody and sentence was deferred. Sheriff Alison Stirling told him at the time that a custodial term was ‘virtually inevitable’.
Yesterday, McKay was sentenced to three years in prison for the fraudulent evasion of VAT with an additional year for removing criminal property abroad.
Cheryl Burr of the HMRC fraud investigation service said: ‘Tax evasion robs the public purse of vital funds.
‘The vast majority play by the rules and pay their dues, but some like McKay attempt to undermine the system by evading VAT to line their own pockets and gain an unfair advantage over legitimate businesses.’
‘Robbing the public purse of vital funds’