Top tax barrister Robert Venables KC, 78, of Old Square Tax Chambers is currently facing three counts of dishonestly cheating the public revenue in active criminal proceedings before Southwark Crown Court.
Our previous reporting of this case:
✍️ Jan 2025: Barrister accused of falsifying tax returns – the indictment revealed
✍️ May 2026: Trial date set for barrister accused of falsifying tax returns
✍️ May 2026: Barrister’s barrister tells jury: “There is nothing legally wrong with avoiding tax and exploiting loopholes”
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Reporting by freelance journalist Daniel Cloake
Robert Venables (left) with barrister Stuart Biggs KC outside Southwark Crown Court
The mouseinthecourt is reporting a 44-minute-speech to the jury by barrister Stuart Biggs KC. The following should not be considered a verbatim note:
STUART BIGGS KC:
Don’t worry I’m not about to subject you to about two days of opening speech from me.
What matters in any case, is that what barristers say to you isn’t evidence, but it is comment and suggestion.
The rules don’t allow me to make an opening speech at this stage, but they do allow me to concisely identify what is in issue.
This is a complex case, and I’m not going to cover every single possible issue. I’m not going to talk tax law at you.
But I will give you a steer as to what the main issues are. So, you understand what it is you’re looking out for or what you could be looking out for. Part of the purpose of telling you what is in issue is telling you what is not in issue.
So, I will remind you what Mr Christopher KC, representing the prosecution, said days ago now, near the start of the trial:
Reorganising one’s affairs so as to pay less tax may be referred to as ‘tax planning’. If it’s done in a way which was not what Parliament had in mind it may be referred to as ‘tax avoidance’, but frequently it can be exactly what Parliament intends to encourage us to do.
Sometimes, however, laws can have unintended consequences, or loopholes, which enable taxpayers to obtain a tax advantage in circumstances which was not intended. When HMRC discover that there is a loophole which taxpayers are taking advantage of, resulting in HMRC collecting less tax than they had intended to be able to, then they will often seek to persuade Parliament to change the law, and to close the loophole; but until that happens, it may be entirely lawful to save tax in that way – however unpopular that may make you, especially if you are very rich in any case.
But we are not concerned in any way about approval or disapproval of rich people finding ingenious ways to save tax. Different people may have different views about that; but those views are not what this case is about, and play no part in what has to be decided.
There is nothing legally wrong with avoiding tax and exploiting loopholes.
Mr Biggs KC gave the example of people using an ISA or those who make gifts more than 7 years before they die and may save inheritance tax. Someone may run a plumbing company and pay themselves dividends.
Another way of reducing your overall tax bill is an extreme version of this. Eg buying property in the names of corporations. Sometimes these possibilities get closed down to make them unlawful. There is nothing wrong with using them while they’re available.
This is a court of criminal law, not a court of morals. Nor a political forum. People will have a range of political opinions. Some people may think “fair play to you”.
Other people may think we should all be paying more tax. Other people may think the government wastes the money they give them and spend them on things they shouldn’t be spending on.
You are not being asked to make any political or moral judgments or to decide if anything is good or bad.
Mr Biggs KC explained that the jury had been referred to correspondence Mr Venables had had with HMRC: you may recall a reference to Mr Venables saying he didn’t want, in his words, HMRC to put their shovel too deeply into his income
But shovel wasn’t his word. It’s a metaphor first used in this context by a Scottish judge Lord Clyde in the 1920’s.
“No man in this country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so as to arrange his legal relations to his business or to his property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel into his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow – and quite rightly – to take every advantage which is open to it under the taxing statutes for the purpose of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is, in like manner, entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue.”
Not a original thought. Not an original metaphor.
You’re being asked a much simpler question than what taxation should be. You have to be sure if he thought he was breaking the law. Ie that he knew he was under-declaring.
We agree with the prosecution there will be loopholes in any rule-based system and any bright spark will find them.
If that happens, and this involves HMRC getting significantly less money, then HMRC will lobby to close the loophole. That’s how we get to the anti-avoidance provisions we have heard of.
During the period of the indictment the government brought in the settlement code. Like all these things if you block one then something springs a leak somewhere else. There will always be loopholes, that’s why we have anti avoidance provisions.
Avoidance as opposed to evasion. Evasion is lying, knowing you are breaking the rules. Avoidance is finding a loophole.
Everyone recognises avoidance rather than evasion is lawful.
If you want to pay less tax you can find loopholes that work. Taking that advantage is your lawful right, you may think last thing you might do is to point it out to people, particularly HMRC, as if you’re right and the loophole works HMRC may well, and will, lobby the government to block the hole.
If you genuinely think you have found a solution, but make a mistake, then you are not guilty of a criminal offence. We don’t consider making mistakes is a serious criminal offence in this county. Cheating is committed on purpose.
Further thing to understand, again apologies if this is obvious, but I have no idea what your backgrounds are: this is a criminal court, it’s not your role as jurors to get the tax back. It was explained that the first-tier tax tribunal exists.
This was a complex system. The arrangements were complex and creating them takes an awful lot of trouble and care.
We were told Mr Venables paid tax at various levels and in three ways.
He is taxed as a partner; the trustees pay 20% in some instance; and the beneficiaries pay tax.
In reality, in real life, Mr Venables gave a significant amount of money away in ways which meant he couldn’t get it back. To children he cared about, and in some instances to charity.
The objective was to pay less tax. When you gave money away in a tax efficient way, that was the objective, that was why he went to all this trouble and bother. So, he would have a lower tax bill.
Count 3, the Citadel count: That isn’t about avoiding tax. This related to the Enablers Legislation. When a professional advisor gives advice to a client, and HMRC disagreed, it was the advisor who would get a penalty. This was a matter of concern among tax advisers. That’s why Mr Venables has set up the Citadel scheme. He didn’t do it to save tax.
What he did need to do was to satisfy himself that the arrangements with citadel didn’t upend his whole system.
You have heard evidence about his animosity towards HMRC. I ask that you reserve judgment until you have heard more.
The situation is more nuanced and more complicated than has been made out.
You may think HMRC officers do a difficult job, and that collecting taxes is an important thing. The way HMRC went about investigating this case wasn’t very sensible. The systems for investigation are perhaps not always very sensible.
Sometimes Mr Venables is entitled to say “I need to understand what you are saying to me before I can answer. I can’t seem to understand”. He says he had no notice about which aspects of his arrangements troubles you. “I would have written a document explaining”
The prosecution will say “he didn’t provide additional information” or “why was he so careful in his language”. Is that a fair criticism where no legal requirement to provide the information, or the form designed by HMRC doesn’t ask the question.
This system involved making lots of documents and making lots of tax returns of various sorts.
Mr Venables told them that he wasn’t a self-employed sole trader, as barristers usually are. He told them he was in a partnership. He told them what the partnership did and what it was about.
He provided that information because that was what he was required to provide, that and no more, no obligation on him to join up the dots. Lots of paperwork had to be completed, some of which is on your iPads, most of the material on your iPads came from Mr Venables. This is the material he has provided to HMRC. That doesn’t mean it’s a lie.
The jury were shown an e-mail from Mr Venables to HMRC showing income received from a partnership of some £475k in 2014.
A second exhibit was shown, showing the figure of £816k.
The jury were shown a figure of £543k declared on a tax return which the trustees paid 20% tax on.
Mr Biggs KC continued: This is not the sort of thing where figures are being hidden.
Mr Venables is not joining up all the dots, but all the dots are there.
Did he think HMRC won’t want to investigate … how likely that was that was his attitude? HMRC had a special barristers team who were making enquiries from a very early stage. The suggestion that they wouldn’t look into him, or be scared off, is wrong.
Would he go to all this trouble to produce documents, as “window dressing”, which is the phrase the prosecution use, for a system what is not supposed to work.
Did he think HMRC would look at this, and be bamboozled, and let this one go?
Overall, ultimately, he didn’t want HMRC to know what he was doing but that doesn’t mean he would lie about it.
You are not judges of law, you are told the law by the judge. You are the judge of the facts.
Part of that understanding is what you are directed as by the law. I.e. that his scheme didn’t work, as a matter of fact.
The court of appeal has ruled in this case that the scheme didn’t work but that doesn’t mean Venables doesn’t think he is wrong.
Mr Venables is a very long standing taxpayer, and he still believes he’s right to this day.
When directed as to the law, you will have to consider when did it become decided law. This may be an odd concept to understand.
I’ll give a basic example: If a bakery wonders how long bread takes to rise, provided the ingredients are the same the laws of physics means the bread comes out the same every time. Tax law isn’t like that. Using a tax scheme means you don’t get something like a loaf at the end.
Mr Biggs explained that schemes could be considered by the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court, and that lawyers would argue how one case is distinguished from another.
Please pay attention as to when any decision of these courts was first available, was it before the period you are considering in the indictment?
This is relevant to Mr Venables state of mind. The prosecution are not being entirely fair when they say “he’s a lawyer, he must know the law”.
Particularly so when a law has just been created by parliament. Eg the Mixed Member Rules (MMR) in 2014. New laws take time for points to be argued.
You will have to consider any evidence, not whether he is right, but whether he genuinely believed he was right.
The key issue is whether he rated himself, believed himself, as a matter of professional pride. If someone would find a loophole it was going to be him. He might be quite proud of that as a tax lawyer.
In short, the defendant disputes any suggestion that these arrangements did not work. He doesn’t agree that he knew the arrangement he went to the trouble to went to setting up, with Dean Wise, did not work, so as to avoid income tax,
There were various reasons for that, he had put in place a number of lines of defence. He had put his shopping in more than one carrier bag.
With regards to Citadel, he believed the law prevented the settlement code from applying to a company.
Of course he knew about the MMP rules, he was a tax barrister.
Mr Biggs concluded by saying he would consider the subject of the burden of proof in more detail later.
At this hearing the CPS were represented by Julian Christopher KC. Mr Venables was represented by Stuart Biggs KC.
The mouseinthecourt attended Southwark Crown Court on Thursday 28th May 2026.
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