A Co Down man has been handed a suspended sentence and ordered to pay €14m in compensation after being convicted in relation to a €400m tax fraud in Germany.
Former investment banker Martin Shields, who has an address in Dublin but is originally from Banbridge, was convicted for his part in the fraud described by a prosecutor as “the greatest tax robbery in German history”.
At a court hearing in Bonn last week the 42-year-old was given a suspended sentence and ordered to pay €14m to compensate for the personal profits he had made.
Shields and another man, Nicholas Diable were involved in a complex fraud scheme known as cum-ex, which involves trading shares at high speed or just before the dividend record date - when companies check records to identify shareholders - resulting in claims for two or more refunds for capital gains tax paid to the state just once.
The pair avoided jail after co-operating with authorities.
Cum-ex trade became hugely popular in the years that followed the last financial crash as many banks were rescued by government's across Europe.
A German court last week ruled that the scheme was illegal rather then taking advantage of loopholes in the law.
Around 600 people across Germany, many involved in the banking and legal sectors, are being investigated for taking part in similar schemes.
Around 130 are also suspected of taking part in cum-ex trades.
Financial damage caused to the German state is estimated to range between €5bn to €55bn.
Shields, an Oxford graduate, began his career as a junior trader for Merrill Lynch and before moving to the London branch of German bank Hypo Vereinsbank, where he met his co accused.
In his closing statement Shields said he had set off on a journey that “began in a bubble and remained in a bubble”.
“Many things were taken for granted and - unfortunately - were not questioned sufficiently,” he said.
“Whatever was taken for granted back then, I now see turned out to have been the wrong path.”
In the first conviction linked to the scheme for what judge Roland Zickler called “a collective case of thievery from state coffers”.
Addressing the defendants he added: “Do we all want to live in a world where everyone is ripping each other off?”
Chief prosecutor Anne Brorhilker said a harsher sentence would have “covered up the fact that the greatest tax robbery in German history was not conducted by two individuals but hundreds of people”.
