Denmark charges another 6, from US, UK, over tax fraud scheme

Denmark's point out prosecutor said on Tuesday it had charged 6 people from america and Britain with defrauding Danish taxes authorities greater than 1.1 billion crowns ($176 million) in a sham trading scheme. The expenses against three U.S. and three British citizens are connected to the so-called "cum-ex" trading schemes, where the Danish express has lost a lot more than 12.7 billion crowns altogether. In January, Denmark charged two UK residents, bringing the full total number of people charged to eight. They happen to be suspected of owning a scheme that engaged submitting applications to the Danish Treasury with respect to investors and companies from around the world to receive dividend taxes refunds, the prosecutor explained.

The defendants confront eight years imprisonment for "gross fraud" if found guilty, although the prosecutor said the utmost penalty could possibly be raised to 12 years under a special section of regulations.

All eight are at large.

"We do not expect them to voluntarily arrive for criminal proceedings where they risk appearing sentenced to so various years' imprisonment. Hence we are working on all conceivable alternatives to make sure that the defendants will be there for the upcoming trial," prosecutor Per Fiig explained in a statement.

The defendants were charged with running the scheme via Germany's North Channel Bank in 2014 and 2015, the prosecutor said.

In 2019, the lender paid a fine of 110 million crowns by a Danish court for its involvement in the dividend stripping scheme.

The cum-ex trading scheme can be staying investigated by authorities in Germany, Belgium and Britain. This past year, two Britons were convicted in Germany's most significant fraud trial in at least 75 years.

The dividend schemes typically involved the trading of company shares rapidly around a syndicate of banks, investors and hedge funds to advise numerous owners, each entitled to a tax rebate.

The brand "cum-ex" is Latin for "with-without", illustrating the apparent vanishing of dividend payments.

The Danish Tax Firm in addition has launched civil cases against U.S. pension plans to recoup the amount of money it has shed. (Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, editing by Ed Osmond and Nick Macfie)