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Andrew Meeson given eight-and-a-half-year sentence
A former president of the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT) has been jailed for eight-and-half-years after being found guilty of a £5m tax fraud.
Andrew Meeson was sentenced by Birmingham Crown Court for claiming relief at source on two fictitious pension schemes administered by his company, Tudor Capital Management Ltd, between June 2007 and March 2010.
Meeson – who stepped down from his role at the head of the ATT in Novermber 2011 – claimed that the millions he cheated out of the Revenue was the refund due on £20m of contributions made by pension scheme members – which were later found by investigators not to exist.
His associate, Peter Bradley, received the same sentence for his part in the conspiracy. The two men had pleaded not guilty following their arrests in 2010 in dawn raids of residential and business premises in the West Midlands and Derbyshire.
A trustee of the pension fund, Steven Price, pleaded guilty to obtaining documents by deception, and was given an 18 month prison sentence, suspended for two years.
HMRC’s assistant director of criminal investigation, Simon De Kayne, said, “This was blatant theft from the economy by people who exploited their positions of trust and authority.”
