[MSN] HMRC INVESTIGATORS HELP TO RECOVER STOLEN PAINTINGS - A Revenue & Customs investigation has led to the recovery of eight valuable paintings bequeathed to the Art Fund.

[Museum Security Network Mailinglist]

17 Oct 2006

HMRC INVESTIGATORS HELP TO RECOVER STOLEN PAINTINGS – A Revenue & Customs
investigation has led to the recovery of eight valuable paintings bequeathed
to the Art Fund. 

Shaun Benedict Gray, aged 29, was ordered to repay £346,425 at Bournemouth
Crown Court after pleading guilty to charges of false accounting and
forgery, HMRC said in a statement. Gray, formerly of Dorset, is serving a
three-year prison sentence. 

HMRC said the paintings can now be “officially passed to the nation”
following a criminal and confiscation investigation by the Revenue and
Customs Prosecutions Office. 

The false accounting charges related to an inheritance tax return that Gray
filed in respect of the estate of the late Helen Guiterman. Gray had an
enduring power of attorney over her affairs. The return omitted assets worth
about £500,000, HMRC said. Gray had forged Guiterman's will, “making himself
the major beneficiary”. 

Guiterman was an authority on the 19th century Scottish artist David
Roberts. She had left her collection of Roberts paintings to the Art Fund
and most of the residue of her estate to charity. 

Judge Beashel told Gray: "You are a wholly dishonest witness who has
committed breathtaking criminality and your evidence was laced with
hypocrisy." 

Gray will serve a further three years in prison, HMRC added, if he fails to
meet the confiscation order by October 2007. Investigator Mark Taylor said:
“This confiscation order denies Mr Gray of the proceeds of his crime. The
compensation order means the real victims of his criminality, the rightful
beneficiaries, will now hopefully receive from the estate of the late Helen
Guiterman in accordance with her true wishes." 

Andrew Goodall 
Editor, TaxationWeb News

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