Hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah loses appeal over order to pay $1bn in tax

Sanjay Shah, a hedge fund trader accused of masterminding a massive tax fraud, lost an appeal at a Dubai court over an order to pay the Danish authorities more than NOK8.5bn ($1.24bn).

The Court of Cassation in Dubai rejected the appeal from a lower court in the emirate this week, according to the Danish tax agency.

The authority said in a statement Wednesday that it would now begin an asset recovery process.

Denmark has sought to claw back more than $2bn that authorities said it was defrauded out of by networks of bankers, lawyers and others as a part of the Cum-Ex scandal.

Shah was named as the mastermind of the scheme in which pension plans filed for tax returns to which they weren’t entitled, because they never paid the taxes to begin with.

Shah, a British national, has always maintained his innocence.

Shah and a group of individual traders and firms accused of earning vast sums of money from the tax trading loop hole are being sued in London by Denmark also.

A London judge recently ruled the dividend tax refund claims at issue weren’t valid in a so-called validity trial.

“It is important to note that the civil proceedings deal exclusively with civil liability issues and do not allow any conclusions to be drawn with regard to the possible criminal liability of my client,” Bjorn Gercke, Shah’s German criminal defence attorney, said in an email.

A spokesperson for Shah did not immediately comment. A copy of the ruling couldn’t be obtained.

Read: Dubai’s DIFC in talks to attract 50 hedge funds