In an unusual fraud case, a London woman has received a suspended prison sentence for claiming an inheritance tax exemption on the estate of the husband she had married bigamously.
The woman in question, Ayse Akgun, was originally married to a man called Ozan Mustafa, but in 2006 she married a second man - Qatari businessman Mousa Hamoud Ali Al-Saif - whom she met whilst working as a croupier at a London casino.
According to the Telegraph, while divorce proceedings had begun between Akgun and Mustafa, they were never actually finalised and so, at the time of both her second marriage in 2006, and Al-Saif’s death in 2009, Akgun was still married to her first husband.
Despite this, Akgun assumed inheritance rights to Al-Saif’s £2.6m estate, took up occupation of his two London properties, and immediately submitted a claim for spousal exemption from inheritance tax.
A dispute then arose over the ownership of the properties and, in the course of the civil hearing into the case, details of Akgun's bigamy and the inheritance tax fraud emerged. She was arrested and criminal proceedings commenced against her.
Akgun was convicted of bigamy and false accounting in May, and was sentenced last week to 18 months in prison, suspended for two years, and 180 hours unpaid work.
While inheritance tax fraud involving bigamy is a very unusual event, tax investigations and prosecutions are generally becoming much more common.
Tax investigations are lengthy and stressful, and even if the Revenue decides against a criminal investigation of its own, it may pass information on to other investigating authorities. We have seen several occasions in which the Revenue passed suspicions/evidence re fraud/money laundering/POCA offences to other prosecuting authorities who have then gone on to prosecute.
Expert advice is essential.
Contact Lewis Nedas’ Criminal Lawyers in London
For specialist tax investigation advice please contact our solicitors Jeffrey Lewis or Siobhain Egan on 020 7387 2032 or complete our online enquiry form here.
This blog post is intended as a news item only - no connection between Lewis Nedas and the parties concerned is intended or implied.
