Judge’s Old Etonian son is jailed over £100m fraud
He conned 700 victims – including celebrities – by promising to cut their tax burden
THE OLD Etonian son of a judge was jailed yesterday for swindling celebrities out of more than £100million in one of the biggest ever tax fraud cases.
Following a ten-month trial, Jonathan Anwyl was convicted of helping to run a bogus scheme encouraging comedians, actors and sports stars to lessen their income tax.
The fraud gang convinced their 700 rich victims that they were running cutting edge eco-research projects in Brazil and China. The scheme was billed as an ‘ethical’ tax avoidance scheme, and aspects of the offshore ruse had parallels with arrangements highlighted in the Paradise Papers leak.
But the operation was a ‘sham’ and members of the group siphoned off huge sums for their own ‘secret money box accounts’ in Switzerland and Holland, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Oxford and Eton- educated Anwyl used some of the proceeds to pay £788,000 off the mortgage of a house he owned in Australia with his French wife Anne.
His mother Shirley Anwyl QC, was a circuit judge for 13 years and resident judge at Woolwich Crown Court until her retirement in 2008. The father-of-one insisted the company was legitimate but after the trial, costing the taxpayer tens of millions, jurors convicted Anwyl and fellow scammer Michael Richards of conspiring to cheat the public revenue.
Anwyl, from Ringmer, East Sussex, was found guilty on his 44th birthday, and was jailed for fiveand-half years.
The trial was so long and complex, one member of the jury found out she was pregnant and gave birth, all in the time between them being sworn in and returning ver- dicts. The judge, Mr Justice Edis, drew cheers from the jurors – who had to process reams of complex documents – when he excused them from serving on future cases for life. He described the case as ‘fraud on an astonishing scale’.
The crooks assured their celebrity investors they would be eligible for tax relief and encouraged them to make claims to HMRC for a total of £107.92million, some of which was still pending when investigations started.
Of the £65million which had cleared, £20million was stolen by the group and used to maintain luxury lifestyles. Richards bought a home in Sussex using the proceeds before selling it to fund buying another property in Dubai.
He also splashed out £32,000 on a diamond engagement ring for his girlfriend from luxury jewellers Boodles, and £250,000 on a bathroom refit.
Charles Miskin QC, prosecuting, told jurors Anwyl was reeled in by Richards and others in the plot which ran between April, 2004 and March, 2010.
Rodney Whiston-Dew, 66, a New Zealand lawyer and former president of the London Rotary Club, was also convicted of conspiring to cheat the public revenue.
Robert Gold, 49, and Eudoros Demetriou, 78, former senior executive at EMI and Warner Music, were also convicted of the same charge.
Richards, Whiston-Dew, and Gold were further found guilty of a second identical count relating to personal tax dodges.
Adam Page, 66, was cleared of any involvement in the plot.
Described by prosecutors as a ‘major attack on the revenue of the United Kingdom’, the criminal investigation took a decade, as the fraudsters fought the HMRC every step of the way.
Offshore companies Carbon Positive Trading Ltd and Carbon Capital Ltd were set up to carry out scientific research contracts worth millions of pounds. The flow of money was used to claim huge amounts of tax relief from HMRC.
But Mr Miskin said: ‘ Large amounts were simply siphoned off into secret money box accounts for some of them.’ The con is believed to be the biggest direct tax fraud ever carried out in Britain.
Richards, of Chelsea Harbour, London and Gold, from St Albans, were jailed for 11 years each.
Whiston-Dew, of Woking, Surrey, was jailed for ten years. And Demetriou, from Oxford, was jailed for six years.