British trader gets 8 years in prison in Sanjay Shah’s Danish tax fraud case

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A British hedge fund trader was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison by a Danish court after having confessed to helping defraud tax authorities in a so-called “cum-ex” tax scheme, the prosecution service said.

Anthony Mark Patterson on Thursday admitted to having contributed to around 3,000 trades, defrauding the Danish tax authorities of around 8.4 billion Danish crowns ($1.22bn), and to attempted fraud worth around 500 million crowns.

The court also ruled to confiscate 100 million crowns from Patterson, which is the amount he has said he made by contributing to the fraud.

Patterson’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment but broadcaster DR said his defence had asked for time to consider whether to appeal the length of the sentence.

The case sets the stage for the upcoming trial of British hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah, the main suspect in the “cum-ex” trading scheme in which the Danish state said it lost more than 12.7 billion crowns.

Sanjay Shah arrested in Dubai in 2022

Solo Capital Partners founder Shah was arrested in Dubai in 2022 and extradited to Denmark last December. He is still held in detention and denies any wrongdoing.

“We are happy and satisfied,” prosecutor Marie Tullin told broadcaster TV2. “(Shah’s) case will be assessed separately,” she said, adding that Patterson would be called as witness in the case.

More than 50 court hearings are scheduled for his case between March 11 this year and June 2025.

The cum-ex schemes, which flourished following the 2008 financial crisis, involved trading shares rapidly around a syndicate of banks, investors and hedge funds to exploit the tax systems of countries such as Denmark, Germany and Belgium.