Southampton car dealer concealed £656,000 in business profits

Joseph Robinson, 61, signed off tax returns which hid more than £656,000 of profits from his business and did not register for VAT for four years.

The twice-married grandfather, who was born in Malta and was registered as a “non-dom”, returned to Court to face his sentence after a judge made him put up £1m security for his bail.

He had been found guilty by a jury at Southampton Crown Court of three counts of making false statements and one of cheating the public revenue between 1999 and 2003, when his business turnover was up to £1.3m a year. The loss to Customs and Excise totalled £431,000 including interest.

Robinson, of Chilworth Road, Chilworth, ran his business under a series of names while trading as Chilworth Cars.

His defence barrister Sarah Forshaw QC told the court the only victim had been the government and the losses to the Inland Revenue had now been repaid.

She said Robinson’s “low tax or no tax” accountant, David Day, was partly to blame because he had prepared the tax returns while at the same time feeding information about the fraud to the Inland Revenue.

Ms Forshaw said Robinson, a man of limited education, was a “grafter” who had made his fortune through hard work, firstly as a butcher, then a builder, and latterly through the second hand car trade for 40 years.

She said he had built a multi-million pound nest egg in off-shore accounts from the sale of business and property in Australia. But she said it was not a case of him cheating the taxman to spend his gains on a “lavish lifestyle”.

Ms Forshaw asked the judge to consider the effect of his sentence on Robinson’s frail 82-year-old mother, who had just suffered a stroke.

Judge Jeremy Burford QC, who released Robinson’s £1m bail money, said the discrepancies between his actual and declared profits were “so enormous” the jury had clearly been satisfied of his guilt.

He said while Robinson had below average intelligence, he did not consider that the role played by his accountant, who was unqualified and a fantasist, made his case special.

Robinson, dressed in a suit, showed little emotion as he was sentenced and taken down.

Speaking after the hearing his wife Andrea claimed the sentence was “very harsh and undeserved”.

“He’s worked hard all his life and has never sponged off the state. He’s never had a lavish lifestyle,” she said.

But Adrian Farley, Revenue and Customs assistant director of criminal investigations, insisted Robinson was “a dishonest criminal who thought he was above the law”. He had robbed honest taxpayers of public funds, he said.