COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -A second Briton charged with defrauding Danish tax authorities in a sham trading scheme to make double tax reclaims was remanded in custody by a Copenhagen court on Wednesday , Denmark’s state prosecutor said.
Hedge fund trader Anthony Mark Patterson, 52, was extradited from Britain to Denmark on Tuesday and will, following a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, be remanded in custody for four weeks, the prosecutor said.
Charges against Patterson are related to the so-called “cum-ex” trading schemes in which the Danish state lost more than 12.7 billion crowns ($1.85 billion).
Denmark’s state prosecutor in 2021 charged eight UK and U.S. citizens with submitting applications to the Danish Treasury on behalf of investors and companies from around the world to receive dividend tax refunds.
Patterson was charged in his absence with participating in a scheme in which the Danish state lost more than 9 billion crowns, and with attempted fraud for around 500 million crowns more.
Patterson denies any wrongdoing, his lawyer said in an email.
Another British suspect in the case was extradited to Denmark from Belgium in June.
Danish police said in a statement late on Tuesday that the key suspect in the case, Briton Sanjay Shah, 52, remained in Dubai.
Shah, who has denied any wrongdoing, was arrested in June 2022 by Dubai police following a request by Denmark for his extradition.
The “cum-ex” schemes, which flourished after the 2008 global financial crisis, involved banks and investors swiftly dealing shares around dividend payout days, blurring stock ownership and allowing multiple parties to claim tax rebates.
($1 = 6.8475 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, editing by Devika Syamnath and Jason Neely)
