A prominent tax law expert has been accused of ‘defrauding the public treasury’ in what is believed to be an unprecedented case against a King’s Counsel.
Robert Venables KC, from 15 Old Square Tax Chambers, has refuted the charges and reportedly made an appearance at Westminster Magistrates court in December last year.
He faces two charges of “cheating the public revenue”: one covering the period from 2013 to 2022, and the other from 2018 to 2022.
Venables has an impressive legal career, having served as chairman of the Revenue Bar Association, a bencher at Middle Temple, and a non-executive honorary fellow at St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford.
His chambers stated that the allegations pertain to Venables’s ‘personal tax matters’ and not those of the chambers, thus declining to comment further.
Reports indicate that the accusations do not involve the tax situation of any client, and Venables is ‘confident’ that he has fulfilled all his tax obligations legally.
The ‘defrauding charge’ is broad encompassing any fraudulent behavior that diverts funds from the revenue or deprives the revenue of money it is entitled to receive.
