The High Court disqualified Kevin Rabbitte from acting as a company director or officer for 14 years and three months after finding that he had participated in a sustained VAT fraud through Westman Pland and Civils Ltd. The order followed a last-minute settlement that resolved the other issues in the liquidator’s application, leaving the disqualification period for the court to decide.
The judgment, delivered by Mr Justice Brian O’Moore on 30 January 2020, records that Rabbitte consented to a declaration under section 610 of the Companies Act 2014 that, while an officer of Westman, he knowingly participated in carrying on the company’s business with intent to defraud creditors. He also consented to personal responsibility for €1.5 million of the company’s debts or liabilities. Those matters were resolved by consent; the judge’s live decision was how long to disqualify him.
The judge said the loss to Revenue accepted for the purpose of the ruling was about €1.2 million. The liquidator’s affidavit described a missing trader intra-community VAT scheme involving purchases of goods using Westman’s VAT number, domestic sales with VAT charged, and nil returns that did not report the transactions. The judgment recounts Rabbitte’s admitted purchases at auctions and other sellers in Britain and Northern Ireland, and commissions he said totalled about €7,000. The court found that Westman’s VAT number was used to facilitate fraud and that nil VAT returns were filed on Rabbitte’s directions.
Rabbitte’s submissions referred to an anonymous person who allegedly threatened him and his family. The judge said the evidence did not show that Rabbitte was coerced into the transactions, and that Rabbitte had stopped attending auctions after Revenue contacted him. The judge also noted that Rabbitte had not reported the alleged threats to gardaí. The person’s identity is not disclosed in the judgment.
In fixing the term, the court treated the fraud as systematic, deliberate and continuous, and said it stopped when Revenue cancelled Westman’s VAT number. The judge also cited false nil returns and financial statements, the company’s lack of discernible legitimate trade, and failures to cooperate with the liquidator and comply with court orders. He set a 15-year period before considering mitigation, then reduced it by nine months to reflect the settlement, resulting in a 14-year-and-three-month disqualification.
The judgment records that the motion was to be struck out with no order as to costs. The personal liability order and fraud declaration were consented to under the settlement; the judgment’s final operative decision was the disqualification period.