Tax and VAT Offences

Criminal prosecutions brought by HMRC involve complex analysis of the finances, accounting and tax compliance of businesses and individuals.

Key issues for these types of cases include gaining a clear understanding of the underlying transactions, how those have been accounted for and the extent to which they have been correctly declared to HMRC.

Our team has extensive experience of dealing with HMRC cases, including insight into the approach and methodology adopted by HMRC from one team member who previously worked for the Fraud Investigation Service.

We regularly act in the following types of cases:

Tax and VAT evasion from under declaration of business profits
VAT repayment fraud
Construction Industry Scheme repayment fraud
Payroll fraud
Tax evasion by high net worth individuals
Marketed avoidance schemes/disguised remuneration
Fuel, Tobacco and Alcohol duty evasion
Benefit fraud
Money laundering offences associated with the above
MTIC Fraud

Money Laundering

Money Laundering:

We regularly act in cases with ML issues under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, falling into four main categories:

ML Charges of concealing, disguising, converting or transferring criminal property, often associated with other alleged criminality.
Other POCA 2002 actions including Confiscation Orders and cash seizures
Alternative Money Transfer Systems (Hawala banking)
Trade based ML

Money Laundering Charges

Money Laundering is the process by which the proceeds of crime are converted into assets which appear to have a legitimate origin. We have considerable expertise in following the often complicated chain of transactions to assess the source, movement and destination of funds alleged to be criminal property.

Other POCA actions:

Our experience includes:

Confiscation orders
Review of the Prosecution s16 statements
Assessment of the Defendant’s benefit of criminal activity and available amount
Asset Seizure/forfeiture and bank account freezing orders
Review of the Prosecution’s evidence supporting their suspicion that the cash seized/funds frozen derive from criminal activity
Review of Defendant’s evidence that the funds seized/frozen relate to legitimate activity.