Jas Bains, who alerted Danish authorities to £1.4bn fraud, says case wasted eight years of his life
A former City solicitor who blew the whistle on a £1.4 billion tax fraud has criticised the justice system after spending eight years defending himself in one of the largest civil claims ever heard in England and Wales.
Jas Bains, admitted as a solicitor in 2002, was head of legal and de facto chief operating officer at Solo Capital, a London hedge fund owned by trader Sanjay Shah. In 2015, Bains alerted the Danish authorities to a massive tax fraud that deprived the country of more than £1.4 billion between 2012 and 2015.
Shah, who was extradited from Dubai, was convicted in Denmark in December 2024 and sentenced to 12 years in prison. He is appealing the conviction. The fraud centred on so-called cum-ex trading, a type of share dealing that exploited dividend tax refund loopholes. Under the scheme, traders made multiple claims for tax rebates on the same dividend payments through complex transactions conducted before and after dividend dates.
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The Danish tax authority, Skatteforvaltningen (SKAT), launched legal action in England’s High Court to recover the losses from 4,170 refund claims. The claim named 56 defendants, including Bains, Shah, and Solo Capital. Bains was never criminally charged.
Case management hearings in Skatteforvaltningen v Solo Capital Partners & Others began in January 2020, with the trial running for 33 weeks from 2024 into 2025. In a 331-page judgment last week, Mr Justice Andrew Baker ruled against SKAT, finding that the Danish tax authority had failed to prove it suffered recoverable loss.
The judge criticised SKAT’s internal controls as “so flimsy as to be almost non-existent,” concluding that the authority had effectively created the conditions for the fraud itself. While he dismissed Shah’s defence as “riddled with implausible claims and obvious lies,” he said the evidence did not establish SKAT’s right to reclaim the money.
Bains, who began his career at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, was criticised in the judgment but ultimately not found liable. Mr Justice Baker said he did not find Bains “very satisfactory as a witness” and noted that Solo Capital’s business model was based on “two basic premises that a qualified lawyer should have considered doubtful.” These included trading structures involving “self-fulfilling settlement loops” among entities that never actually owned any shares, and the assumption that non-shareholders could claim dividend tax refunds.
The judge remarked that Solo “could have done with an independent-minded, serious impartial head of legal,” adding: “I do not think Mr Bains was that person.” He went on to say that Bains’ evidence appeared to be influenced by “a strong desire to deflect possible blame away from himself” and “a wrong-headed sense of grievance” about being included in the civil case.
Despite the criticism, the ruling effectively cleared Bains of liability after years of litigation. Speaking after the judgment, Bains expressed frustration over the prolonged proceedings. “This unnecessary trial cost me eight years of my life,” he said. “I’m grateful to the justice system for exonerating me in what was clearly politically motivated litigation, exacerbated by the greed of lawyers.”
The case marks the end of one of the most extensive and expensive civil fraud actions to reach the High Court in recent years. The proceedings reflect the global fallout from the cum-ex trading scandal, which has triggered investigations and prosecutions across multiple jurisdictions, including Germany and Denmark.
Bains’ remarks underscore the toll that lengthy, high-profile litigation can take on individuals involved, even when they are ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.