Oh what a man! Now that's what I call proper fraud.... brilliant! A lesson to us all
(apart from the assaulting of the model, that is)
From the Torygraph
Fraudster jailed for stealing £55m from the taxman
By Caroline Davies
(Filed: 02/12/2005)
A British financier who defrauded the Inland Revenue out of £55 million while living in luxury on the shores of Lake Geneva was jailed for 12 years and six months yesterday for the "largest swindle of its kind" in Britain.
Ian Leaf, 51, funded a multi-millionaire's lifestyle, buying a lake-side chateau and a ski chalet, with a complex fraud described as "breathtaking and audacious" by Judge David Higgins, sentencing at Southwark Crown Court.
Using a smokescreen of real and bogus companies, he is estimated to have been paid £55 million in tax benefits and to have made a profit of £22 million - all of which remains unaccounted for.
His case featured thousands of fictitious documents, a bank registered on a small South Pacific atoll, a firm of brokers that boasted little more than an accommodation address, and a convincing array of pretend profits and expenses on which he claimed tax allowances.
Leaf, who denied fraud, was convicted last month of 13 counts of fraudulent trading between 1991 and 1996.
Sentencing him yesterday, Judge Higgins said he had been a "constant criminal for many years" and was "entirely without remorse". His crimes were on a "truly massive scale" and "may well be without precedent".
The nine-week trial heard that Leaf ran his empire from his Swiss home, setting up 13 "subsidiary" companies he had bought from parent concerns in construction, finance and trading. Using his grandly titled Allied Corporation Bank - which existed in name only on the Pacific tax haven of Nauru - he pretended that his newly acquired interests had taken out vast loans. The fictitious interest payments he said they generated were then offset against tax.
He also claimed the loans were used to make profitable exchange deals through his brokerage business, and bogus dividends were then used to regain corporation taxes paid by the company's former owners.
Eventually revenue and customs officers discovered what was going on. But it was only after an extensive three-year investigation that Leaf was found in Italy.
He had been living in his £5 million chateau at Gland, and in his chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier. He was arrested only when he flew to Rome in September 2000 in a chartered jet with his wife, Caroline, and mother-in-law.
His passport had expired five days earlier and checks led to an extradition warrant from Britain. He was arrested and spent nine months in jail before winning bail.
But two weeks before an Italian court was due to order his extradition, he disappeared. He took a train to Milan, hitched a lift to the foothills of the Alps and hired a guide to walk to Switzerland. When later found by a newspaper, he reportedly said: "It was easy. It took just a few hours to cross the border." He was eventually arrested by Swiss police in July last year. Leaf, who left his home in Denham, Bucks, for Switzerland in the late 1980s, had been under investigation since 1997 when London customs officers raided more than 100 firms, seizing documents which led to 22 charges of conspiracy to defraud, obtaining money by deception and false accounting.
He declined to give evidence during the trial, instead calling expert witnesses who maintained that he had not contravened any banking rules. The judge told him: "You have by dishonest means deprived the Inland Revenue of approximately £55 million, out of which you have made a net profit of approximately £22 million. The whereabouts of this sum remains unknown." He added. "Every law-abiding citizen in this country is a victim of your crimes in that you have denied the country substantial resources". A confiscation order will be held next year.
In 1986, Leaf was arrested and charged with assaulting Caroline Christensen, who worked as a topless model, in London's Park Lane. At the time he was chairman of the Symbol car showroom and was allegedly involved in a feud with Miss Christensen's husband, John Lashmar. After a high-profile trial - also at Southwark Crown Court - Leaf was cleared.
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I might visit him in jail! And try and learn from the master
(apart from the assaulting of the model, that is)
From the Torygraph
Fraudster jailed for stealing £55m from the taxman
By Caroline Davies
(Filed: 02/12/2005)
A British financier who defrauded the Inland Revenue out of £55 million while living in luxury on the shores of Lake Geneva was jailed for 12 years and six months yesterday for the "largest swindle of its kind" in Britain.
Ian Leaf, 51, funded a multi-millionaire's lifestyle, buying a lake-side chateau and a ski chalet, with a complex fraud described as "breathtaking and audacious" by Judge David Higgins, sentencing at Southwark Crown Court.
Using a smokescreen of real and bogus companies, he is estimated to have been paid £55 million in tax benefits and to have made a profit of £22 million - all of which remains unaccounted for.
His case featured thousands of fictitious documents, a bank registered on a small South Pacific atoll, a firm of brokers that boasted little more than an accommodation address, and a convincing array of pretend profits and expenses on which he claimed tax allowances.
Leaf, who denied fraud, was convicted last month of 13 counts of fraudulent trading between 1991 and 1996.
Sentencing him yesterday, Judge Higgins said he had been a "constant criminal for many years" and was "entirely without remorse". His crimes were on a "truly massive scale" and "may well be without precedent".
The nine-week trial heard that Leaf ran his empire from his Swiss home, setting up 13 "subsidiary" companies he had bought from parent concerns in construction, finance and trading. Using his grandly titled Allied Corporation Bank - which existed in name only on the Pacific tax haven of Nauru - he pretended that his newly acquired interests had taken out vast loans. The fictitious interest payments he said they generated were then offset against tax.
He also claimed the loans were used to make profitable exchange deals through his brokerage business, and bogus dividends were then used to regain corporation taxes paid by the company's former owners.
Eventually revenue and customs officers discovered what was going on. But it was only after an extensive three-year investigation that Leaf was found in Italy.
He had been living in his £5 million chateau at Gland, and in his chalet in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier. He was arrested only when he flew to Rome in September 2000 in a chartered jet with his wife, Caroline, and mother-in-law.
His passport had expired five days earlier and checks led to an extradition warrant from Britain. He was arrested and spent nine months in jail before winning bail.
But two weeks before an Italian court was due to order his extradition, he disappeared. He took a train to Milan, hitched a lift to the foothills of the Alps and hired a guide to walk to Switzerland. When later found by a newspaper, he reportedly said: "It was easy. It took just a few hours to cross the border." He was eventually arrested by Swiss police in July last year. Leaf, who left his home in Denham, Bucks, for Switzerland in the late 1980s, had been under investigation since 1997 when London customs officers raided more than 100 firms, seizing documents which led to 22 charges of conspiracy to defraud, obtaining money by deception and false accounting.
He declined to give evidence during the trial, instead calling expert witnesses who maintained that he had not contravened any banking rules. The judge told him: "You have by dishonest means deprived the Inland Revenue of approximately £55 million, out of which you have made a net profit of approximately £22 million. The whereabouts of this sum remains unknown." He added. "Every law-abiding citizen in this country is a victim of your crimes in that you have denied the country substantial resources". A confiscation order will be held next year.
In 1986, Leaf was arrested and charged with assaulting Caroline Christensen, who worked as a topless model, in London's Park Lane. At the time he was chairman of the Symbol car showroom and was allegedly involved in a feud with Miss Christensen's husband, John Lashmar. After a high-profile trial - also at Southwark Crown Court - Leaf was cleared.
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I might visit him in jail! And try and learn from the master
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