THE brother of the football star and TV presenter Gary Lineker was jailed for two and a half years yesterday, after he admitted a £220,000 tax fraud.
Wayne Lineker, a millionaire sports bar owner, smuggled cash into Britain under the tax radar, using a "tried and tested" money mule system of unsuspecting family and friends.
At first bundles of pesetas and escudos from pubs in Spain, Portugal and the Canary Islands were laundered into sterling at bureaux de change. Then City stockbroker John Stacey, 56, was brought in to secure a better exchange rate by siphoning it through several bank accounts. But the scam came unstuck when auditors realised accounting rules had been breached during the transfer of Lineker's secret profits.
The two and David Hodges, 43, Lineker's manager, were jailed for five years, eight months in total at London's Southwark Crown Court yesterday.
Judge Stephen Robbins warned Lineker, 43, who owns a 2 million mansion in Fyfield, Essex, that unless he paid back the outstanding 90,000, he faced 24 further months in jail.
Lineker, whose brother now presents the BBC's Match of the Day, admitted conspiracy to defraud the Inland Revenue between 1999 and 2001.
The court heard the sentence could have "disastrous consequences" for the pub empire built up by Lineker since 1988. It was in that year the former Leicester market trader decided to move to Tenerife and cash in on his brother's name. There he opened the World Famous Lineker's Bar. Other bars - simply called Lineker's - followed in Spain, Portugal and Cyprus. They are filled with footballing memorabilia and attract players, celebrities and fans. <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-109237959-1"></script>
<script>
window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
gtag('js', new Date());
gtag('config', 'UA-109237959-1');
</script>
<!-- Google tag (gtag.js) -->
<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XDGJVZXVQ4"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'G-XDGJVZXVQ4'); </script>
No comments:
Post a Comment