COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -A Briton charged with defrauding Danish tax authorities of more than 320 million Danish crowns ($46 million) in a sham trading scheme to make double tax reclaims was extradited to Denmark from Belgium on Tuesday, Danish police said in a statement.
The lawyer for the suspect, Guenther Klar, was not immediately available for comment.
Danish prosecutors in 2021 brought preliminary criminal charges against Klar, along with two other British and three U.S. citizens for defrauding tax authorities of more than 1.1 billion crowns.
The preliminary charges against the six – all at large at the time – were connected to the broader, so-called “cum-ex” trading scheme, in which the Danish state lost more than 12.7 billion crowns.
The scheme, which flourished after the 2008 global financial crisis, involved banks and investors swiftly dealing shares around dividend payout days, blurring stock ownership and allowing multiple parties to claim tax rebates.
Klar was formally detained in absentia in January 2022.
“The 53-year-old British citizen is believed to be the central mastermind behind the dividend tax fraud that took place via the company Salgado Capital,” Danish police’s special crimes unit (NSK) said in the statement on Tuesday.
An NSK spokesperson declined to comment, including on the status of the indictments of the other five persons.
($1 = 6.9041 Danish crowns)
(Reporting by Louise Breusch Rasmussen, editing by Jon Boyle, Anna Ringstrom and Sharon Singleton)