HMRC gun for David Perrin and hit

An accountant who committed a £70 million tax fraud was ordered to pay back £809,000 yesterday.

David Perrin, 47, was sentenced to 18 months in prison last year for running a tax scam that generated profits of more than £4.5 million for him and his colleague, Roy Faichney, 54.

The pair mocked HM Revenue and Customs by changing the words to the Gloria Gaynor disco classic I Will Survive and singing it at a seminar organised by their company, Vantis Tax. Their version ran: “They should have changed that stupid law / they should have b*****ed charity / but they left that lovely tax relief for folks to pay to me.”

Perrin spent profits from the scheme on cars, holidays and property. At a proceeds of crime hearing at Blackfriars Crown Court he was given six months to pay back £809,692 to HMRC or face three more years in jail.

The former Inland Revenue official, deputy managing director of Vantis Tax Ltd, and Faichney, a managing director, advised 600 clients to buy shares in four new companies they had set up under a scheme that ran in 2005 and 2006. The companies were listed on the Channel Islands Stock Exchange and people were paid to buy and sell the shares, originally worth a few pence each, to inflate their price falsely.

The shares were donated to charities so that share owners could try to claim £70 million tax relief.

Jim Graham, an HMRC criminal investigator, said outside court: “With his knowledge of the tax system, Perrin thought that he was one step ahead of both HMRC and the law. This cynical fraud not only stole millions of pounds from taxpayers, but also conned innocent charities into accepting gifts of virtually worthless shares, just so Perrin could inflate his own criminal earnings.”

From The Times