A company director has been barred from running another firm for 12 years because of an unpaid £7million tax bill.
Michael Anthony Lamden, from Plymouth, has been disqualified from being a company director until 2031 after being embroiled in a case involving a firm registered in Africa, a £43million transaction in mobile phone airtime, which he “forgot” to tell the taxman about, and a VAT bill which never got paid.
Mr Lamden has not been charged with a criminal offence but nonetheless found himself in hot water for not doing enough due diligence on a deal which the Insolvency Service said any reasonable business person would find to be “too good to be true”.
It concluded that Mr Lamden, whose firm MY.KLT Ltd is now in liquidation, did not do enough to check out the companies he was involved with despite being aware of a practice called carousel fraud, whereby goods are imported and sold on without the VAT that accrues being paid to HMRC.
Mr Lamden, aged 50, ended up agreeing with Insolvency Service chief that he was mired in a deal connected to the “fraudulent evasion of VAT”.
His telecoms company MY.KLT Ltd was involved in buying and selling telecommunications airtime, effectively mobile phone minutes which are even used as a currency in some places such as Africa.
His firm had a supplier and a customer, one of which was registered in Uganda. But when MY.KLT was involved in a £43million transaction it accrued a huge VAT bill.
When it was not paid a HMRC began to probe the deal and decided Mr Lamden had failed to check out the firms he was dealing with, despite him having an “awareness” of carousel fraud.
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These two companies are now understood to be untraceable, and the tax bill, for an eye-watering £7,023,249 including penalties, landed on MY.KLT.
When it could not be paid it resulted in Mr Lamden being banned from running a firm in the 海角视频 until 2031.
The businessman, who now operates a new business called ML Consultants with addresses in Poland and Bulgaria, said negotiations with HMRC are still ongoing and could only tell Business Live: “I’m declining to comment, it might jeopardise anything I have in the pipeline as regards a resolution.”
An HMRC spokesperson said: “We cannot comment on identifiable individuals or businesses.”
But the Insolvency Service, which disqualified Mr Lamden, confirmed that he signed a disqualification undertaking that came into force on May 20, 2019, regarding his conduct as director of MY.KLT.
The Insolvency Service said: “In his undertaking Michael Lamden does not dispute that, between 1 June 2015 and 29 June 2015, he caused the company to participate in transactions that were connected with the fraudulent evasion of VAT, such connections being something which he either knew or should have known about.
“He is disqualified for 12 years, until 19/5/2031.”
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It stressed this is a civil matter and added: “In general terms, where evidence of criminal wrongdoing is found, our civil investigators will pass that evidence on to our criminal investigation team or relevant prosecuting authority, but we do not comment on our investigatory activities.”
Case details on the Insolvency Service website revealed Mr Lamden caused MY.KLT to be involved in transactions which were “connected with the fraudulent evasion of VAT, such connections being something which he either knew or should have known about.”
It said: “He forgot to inform HMRC of the £43million trade when meeting with HMRC officers on 29 June 2015.”
The Insolvency Service website said: “Despite being a start-up company with a sole director and no employees, MY.KLT managed in two months to generate a purported trade of £43,273,566.
“HMRC think that the reasonable business person would find this too good to be true.
“Despite being aware of VAT fraud in MY.KLT’s trade sector and engaging in transactions bearing the features of such fraud, he failed to ensure that MY.KLT carried out effective steps, checks and/or due diligence in respect of its trade and of its trading partners.”
It said Mr Lamden failed to carry out third party checks into whether the firm’s supplier and customer were credible, solvent businesses that would honour trading commitments.
It concluded: “All of the transactions undertaken by MY.KLT have traced back to a fraudulent defaulter.”
MY.KLT, originally known as Thirty One-Ten Trading, was set up in 2014, and based at a Plymouth residential address. Mr Lamden was the sole director.
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It changed its name the following year and began a nomadic existence whereby the postal address moved first to Sutton Harbour’s Salt Quay House, where it used the Regus business rooms for a temporary base.
The firm then relocated its address to Devon Street in Birmingham, and, after flitting back and forth between a Plymouth residential address and Salt Quay House eventually arrived at Burringdon Way’s Eurotech House, back in Plymouth, all within a few months.
MY.KLT was wound up in the High Court in November 2018 under the Insolvency Act, after a petition by HMRC.
Mr Lamden’s last known address was in Victoria Place, Stoke, Plymouth, but the building is now partly empty, having been recently renovated. The owner said Mr Lamden left "four years ago".
Mr Lamden’s new company has bases in the Polish capital Warsaw and the Bulgarian capital Sofia.