Brewery boss in tax trial had £3m drug bust debt wiped out

Tax trial: Jules Whiteway-Wilkinson
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A London brewery boss on trial for cheating the taxman of nearly £730,000 has had a £3 million debt from a drug trafficking conviction wiped out by prosecutors because he does not have the money to pay, a court heard.

Jules Whiteway-Wilkinson, the founder of London Fields Brewery in Hackney, was ordered to repay £2.1 million of criminal profits after being jailed in 2004 for supplying drugs to warehouse partygoers in Shoreditch.

His debt had risen to more than £3 million because of interest charges‎.

But Wood Green Crown Court - where Whiteway-Wilkinson and his wife Rosemary Spence are facing tax evasion charges - was told that prosecutors have agreed to write off the debt after receiving a £100,000 payment from the brewer’s parents.

The disclosure came as barrister Andrew Campbell-Tiech QC began his defence of Whiteway-Wilkinson by describing his plight as “a morality tale of our times” involving “redemption, trust and betrayal, callousness” and an “extraordinary bureaucratic farce” involving the taxman and the Crown Prosecution Service.

Whiteway-Wilkinson‎ is accused of deliberately failing to pay VAT, national insurance, PAYE and student loan contributions totalling £727,203 to HM Revenue and Customs over a three year period.

Both he and Ms Spence, who is facing the same charges, deny the allegations.

‎Prosecution barrister Timothy Godfrey said the pair had deliberately failed to pay “very large amounts of tax” in a “long-running tax evasion on a large scale” during which they had provided “false and misleading” information about their business.

Mr Campbell-Tiech rejected the allegation, however, and insisted that although the brewery’s accounts had been a “mess” Whiteway-Wilkinson had always intended to pay the taxes owed.

“Debt is not fraud. All the unpaid tax did not enrich him or his wife. All of it was ploughed back into what was ultimately a failed business venture,”‎ the barrister told the court.

Mr Campbell-Tiech said the root of the saga dated to 1996 when Whiteway-Wilkinson had come to London as a “young man from a privileged background” who had “rebelled against the strictures of family” by setting up an “edgy” business in Shoreditch running “hugely successful” warehouse parties.

These attracted “luvvies and minor celebrities” but Whiteway-Wilkinson, a former public schoolboy who had his own “unattractive drug habit”, began “supplying drugs to partygoers” to stop other dealers ‎operating at his parties.

He was arrested and jailed in 2004 for 12 years for drug trafficking before attempting to rebuild his life after his release in 2010 by setting up the London Fields Brewery.

The brewery won “prize after prize” but had suffered a “devastating” blow after prosecutors’ attempts to make him pay his confiscation order attracted negative publicity.

Mr Campbell-Tiech said Whiteway-Wilkinson’s business inexperience and criminal past, which stopped him obtaining loans, created further difficulties, but that he had continued to see the brewery as his “lifeline” and the way to pay his confiscation order.

‎That prospect was dashed when tax investigators arrested Whiteway-Wilkinson and his wife in December 2014 only months after other Revenue officials had been seeking to help the brewer, who had been liasing with the authorities, sort out his affairs.

Mr Campbell-Tiech said the varying approach of “different branches” of HM Revenue and Customs was part of an “extraordinary bureaucratic farce” during which officials had also blocked attempts by Whiteway-Wilkinson to register for and pay beer tax while at the same time pursuing him for the money.

He said that prosecutors had also recently changed tack by abandoning efforts to enforce the £3 million confiscation order debt, in return for a £100,000 payment, after accepting Whiteway-Wilkinson’s argument that he had never had the “hidden asset” money previously deemed to be in his possession.

He added: “This case is a almost a morality tale of our times. It is a very human story. It deals with issues of redemption, naivety, trust and betrayal and it deals with issues of bureaucracy and callousness.”

The trial continues.

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