Another Consulting Overseas Victim?

[Clownio]

For what it's worth, I was involved in the Consulting Overseas / Sandfield consultants fiasco and was one of the people who settled on the understanding that if HMRC lose the case - or do not proceed to pursue the "non-settlers for their dosh - then I would get my money back.

I paid up over £42K in total and live in hope !

[Svalbaard]

He "settled"? Does that mean HMRC offered to negotiate a deal with him, or was £35k his full outstanding liability + penalities + fines ?

Just wondering...

I don't have a full account but I believe it was a negotiated settlement with HMRC to avoid the full investigation as after trying to get in touch with CO I think he felt he had been fu**ed over when all they offered him was investigation insurance. Despite previous assurances that the scheme was watertight.

[Le Turk]

For what it's worth, I was involved in the Consulting Overseas / Sandfield consultants fiasco and was one of the people who settled on the understanding that if HMRC lose the case - or do not proceed to pursue the "non-settlers for their dosh - then I would get my money back.

I paid up over £42K in total.

I got a communication today from a contact at consulting overseas telling me that ..."The ball is with HMRC, they have had all the appeals from non settlers and need to take action for recovery, if in fact they are going to. There is nothing we can do at present until we see their next move."

Ever the optimist, I read this in a positive way and if they (HMRC) are still deciding whether to take action for recovery there's still hope that they wont and I'll get my "hard-earned" back.

You never know.

Hi,

I'm one of the settlers too and as with you also remember that one of the pre-conditions for our settlement was that there would be some sort of finality in the case, in the form of non-settlers being pursued with a test case going to the commissioners.

Both Sandfield and the Inland Revenue confirmed that this would be done. It'll be great to know when though. Somehow, on the "successful" outcome of a non-settler I don't think the IR would write to me or anyother settler that they may be entitled to a refund ?

Would be great to have some time frames from the IR

[Bert]

Update

Hi apologies for not posting an update.

In the end, after taking some (limited) advice from Chiltern I settled. Will post details of the process I went through this week once I dig it out again.

Will also be logging into the Sandfield private website to see if any update from Chiltern.

[Le Turk]

Any update on the situation ? We haven't heard anything from Chilterns / Sandfield for over 1 year.

What is the Inland revenue doing with the Appeals ?

Cheers

[adiemus]

Any news

Just following on from recent posts.. has anyone had any information from either Chiltern or Sandfield on this situation. I have left message on the CO/Sandfield website but not heard anything back, maybe it is just the holiday season.

Like others I settled on the understanding that there would be some finality to this episode. I understand HMRC do their utmost to slow things down, I was going to contact Chilterns to see if they can get an update onto the site for us all. I wonder if anyone has more information from them or CO?

thanks

[Le Turk]

Same as you, absolutely no reply back from Sandfields. You'd be better off chasing up Chilterns or the IR for a position. Starting to think Sandfield have done a runner.

[bigfella]

Update

Does anyone have any news from Chilterns?

[ibs]

?

I haven't heard anything from Chilterns, Sandfield or since my last communication about a year or so ago the HMRC!

I've been looking at this again over the past few months and to be honest while I was with Sandfield Systems I didn't earn much more than if I'd been contracting and using my own Accountant.

We were effectively employees of Sandfield Systems.

I haven't heard from anyone who was better off monetarily working through Sandfield Systems than the "normal" contractor route.

I'm getting more concerned and have been speaking to my accountant if I get any info that may be useful I'll post it here.

[ibs]

More details on how this really worked.... (part1)

Ok, as I mentioned yesterday, I've been speaking to my accountant and he believes that all of the contractors who joined Sandfield were conned by Consulting Overseas. He first got me thinking by saying that if he had come up with the soft currency idea he wouldn't have used it with contractors. He would have marketed it to high net worth individuals (HNW's) along the following lines.

1. The HNW would be asked to deposit £1m as security.
2. The scheme would then advance him a loan of £1m equivalent in Belarus Roubles (BYR).
3. The HNW would then immediately convert his BYR back to Sterling. He would keep £800K and use £200K to forward buy enough BYR in 12 months to clear his loan.
4. After 12 months the forward contract would be exercised and the BYR loan repaid.
5. The scheme would have converted the BYR back into sterling and found that because the BYR had only depreciated by 30% they got £700K back.
5. The scheme would retain £100K from these proceeds as a fee and return £600K to the HNW.
6. The result is that the HNW has converted £1m to £1.4m and the scheme has made £100K.

My accountant says that the market would not allow this scheme to work because for each winner there is a loser. In this case the provider of the forward contract was the loser. The forward contract would have cost much more.