# Danish court sentences Sanjay Shah to 12 years in cum-ex tax fraud case
On 2024-12-12, a Danish court handed British hedge fund trader Sanjay Shah a 12-year prison sentence after finding him guilty of a large-scale dividend tax fraud built around a so-called cum-ex trading scheme.
The Glostrup city court concluded that Shah was behind a complex operation that fraudulently secured nine billion Danish krone, or about $1.27 billion, in dividend tax refunds from the Danish treasury between 2012 and 2015. Judges also found him guilty of trying to defraud the state of a further 553 million krone. The sentence matched the maximum sought by prosecutors.
The case is one of the most significant criminal proceedings linked to Europe’s broader cum-ex scandal, in which rapid share trading around dividend dates created the appearance of multiple owners and made duplicate tax refund claims possible. According to the report, the trades were directed by Shah’s London-based hedge fund Solo Capital Partners. Prosecutors said the arrangement created the illusion that several investors were each entitled to refunds on dividends, even when the underlying shares and tax payments did not support those claims.
Shah denied wrongdoing throughout the case. He argued in court that the trades exploited a legal loophole rather than breaking the law and said he should be acquitted. His lawyer, Kaare Pihlmann, said Shah would appeal the verdict and sentence.
The ruling also sits at the end of a long legal path that crossed multiple jurisdictions. Shah had been living in Dubai and was extradited in December 2023 from the United Arab Emirates to Denmark to stand trial. The report says Dubai police received an international arrest warrant for Shah on January 7, 2023, and that he was arrested five months later in the emirate’s Al Rafaa district.
Before the criminal verdict, the Danish government had already secured a civil ruling against Shah in Dubai. In September 2023, judges there ordered him to repay $1.25 billion to the Danish state in a lawsuit brought by the government. The UAE said at the time that it remained committed to international cooperation against organised crime, money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
The case is part of a wider European effort to confront cum-ex schemes that investigators believe drained billions from public treasuries in countries including Germany, Austria and Belgium. The National reported that investigations led by Germany and Denmark have produced raids, arrests and prosecutions, and that Danish authorities have charged several British and U.S. citizens over related cases.
For Denmark, the sentence closes one chapter in a complex tax case that has drawn public attention because of the scale of the alleged losses and the international trail of money, trading and legal proceedings. For Shah, it leaves an appeal as the next likely stage in a dispute he has insisted was based on lawful trading, even as the court accepted the prosecution’s account of fraud.
