A leading tax barrister has been charged with ‘cheating the public revenue’ in what is thought to be the first prosecution of a Kings Counsel of its kind.
Robert Venables KC, of 15 Old Square Tax Chambers, denies the offences and reportedly appeared at Westminster Magistrates court in December last year.
He has served as chairman of the Revenue Bar Association and is a bencher at Middle Temple and a non-executive honorary fellow of the University of Oxford college, St Edmund Hall. His chambers told the Gazette that the allegations relate to Venables’s ‘personal tax’ and not that of chambers and therefore declined to comment.
It has been reported that the allegations do not relate to the tax position of any client and that Venables is ‘confident’ that he has paid all tax lawfully due.
Venables has been charged with two counts of ‘cheating the public revenue’, according to The Times, and the alleged offences span almost 10 years.
The offence is a broad one which covers any form of fraudulent conduct that results in diverting money from the revenue and depriving the revenue of money to which it was entitled.
