PM andthe Skyfall car dealer jailed for £86,000 tax fraud
THERESA MAY was embroiled in an embarrassing controversy last night over a trickster jailed for a tax fraud.
Car dealer Charles Mogford, who lives in the Prime Minister’s Maidenhead constituency, was last week sentenced to two years in prison for an £86,000 VAT scam.
Mrs May has previously admitted lobbying on behalf of Mogford who sought a £500,000 taxpayer-backed loan to boost his business.
She was unaware he had previously been jailed in the US after pleading guilty to grand theft and theft of state funds, involving a Florida luxury boat business.
Mogford, who supplied specially modified Land Rovers for the 2012 James Bond film Skyfall, said he saw no need to tell Mrs May about his criminal record in America.
He obtained an Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) loan under a scheme to help small businesses, introduced by the Coalition Government in which she was Home Secretary. The company later went bust. Mogford said he needed the cash to relocate his business as a result of the new Reading to London Crossrail high-speed rail link that passes through Maidenhead.
The Coalition’s EFG scheme was designed to help small companies unable to get conventional bank loans due to a lack of security or track record.
In 2013, Mogford duly obtained a £580,000 EFG loan.
Details of his US prison record are widely available on the internet – including a photograph and a 2008 US court judgment refusing to reduce his sentence.
Shortly after his release, he returned to the UK and set up a new business in Maidenhead.
The firm went bust – despite the £500,000 EFG loan, owing more than £1 million to more than 100 businesses and individuals, some in Ms May’s constituency.
Mrs May has said that she raised Mr Mogford’s concerns with vari- ous bodies, but had not provided ‘any assistance’ for him to obtain the loan.
Sentencing Mogford, 53, at Reading Crown Court last week, Judge Johannah Cutts said: ‘You had the leading role in this offence.’
Julia Smith, 51, a fellow ex-director of Mogford’s Auto Exporters UK Limited, formerly Berkshire Land Rover, was given a suspended 18-month prison sentence for the same offence.
The court heard the pair submitted a VAT claim in 2010 for 31 Land Rovers, when only two vehicles had been bought.
The fraudulent invoice was used to make a false VAT repayment claim, and was exposed after an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs.
Both pleaded guilty. They were also banned from holding any company directorships for up to ten years.
An HMRC spokesman said: ‘Mogford and Smith had traded legitimately, but greed led them to commit VAT fraud.
‘Our message is clear – it is simply not acceptable to steal from the tax system and, ultimately, honest UK taxpayers. HMRC will continue to pursue those criminals who attack the tax system.’