Ten years for £51m VAT fraudster who called himself lord

As a lay preacher and law lecturer, Malcolm Edwards-Sayer had all the credentials to be a pillar of society.

But in reality Edwards-Sayer was a fraudster involved in an elaborate £51million VAT scam.

There was nothing genuine about him or the import business he purported to run.

Yesterday he was jailed for ten years at Nottingham Crown Court after admitting crimes dating back more than a decade.

Until he was finally caught by a Revenue and Customs investigation, the £594m is the value of fraud cases which went to court in the first half of 2007 49-year-old laundered money through a complex "carousel" fraud.

Paperwork appeared to show he had imported millions of pounds worth of computer chips, mobile phones and satellite navigation systems from the EU free of VAT.

But the goods never existed. They were invented to earn a fortune in VAT repayments from the Government.

Documents showed the fictitious goods as being sold on with VAT added, through a complex web of bogus companies.

Eventually they were "exported" again to the EU, whereupon the exporter - also bogus called - would be entitled to reclaim VAT from the Government.

A spokesman for HM Customs and Revenue said Edwards-Sayer and his associates were wrongly paid "millions upon millions of pounds" in VAT repayments.

It is not known how much they earned from what Judge Jonathan Teare called a "massive and barefaced scam" and efforts are continuing to trace missing funds.

Accountants have found "nothing" and his lawyer claimed his crimes did not fund a "lavish lifestyle".

Police who raided his "relatively modest" Nottingham home found a £10,000 BMW, £9,000 in cash in bins and a £7,000 Krugerrand gold coin.

Edwards-Sayer - described as a 'facilitator' rather than an organiser of the fraud - was jailed for six-and-a-half years for the fraud and banned from running any company for 12 years.

He was jailed for a further threeand-a-half years for stealing £18,000 from clients while falsely working as a solicitor.

The court heard he had himself launched a company called the Edwards Christiansen Partnership and applied to Claims Direct to be on its panel of solicitors.

It passed on seven injury victims to Edwards-Sayer, who supposedly won them £18,067. But he stole the money before it reached their bank accounts.

In 2002 he started the VAT fraud and began dealing in far higher himself lord sums. His companies failed to pay £51million VAT to the Government.

The court heard he was also helping others involved in carousel fraud in completing documentation, setting up companies and opening bank accounts.

The judge said 'comprehensive failures' by the prosecution meant eight other defendants lord accused of taking part in the fraud walked free because they could not receive a fair trial.

The only other conviction connected to the scam was for money laundering.

Rachel Horton, 37, of Newark, Nottinghamshire, admitted laundering £1million under the Proceeds of Crime Act and was given 150 hours' community service.