Cheltenham nightclub boss jailed for VAT fraud

Paul Regan, former company director of The Prom Club Limited, falsified invoices to fraudulently claim VAT repayments for over a year after the nightclub ceased trading in May 2012.

In addition to the custodial sentence, a confiscation order was granted after Regan pleaded guilty at Gloucestershire Crown Court. Regan has been ordered to repay £23,682.98 in full within six months, or serve a further 12 months in jail.

Colin Spinks, assistant director of criminal investigation at HMRC, said: “Regan deliberately set out to create a false paper trail so that he could claim money to which he was not entitled. He manipulated a system that exists for the benefit of legitimate companies with the sole purpose of lining his own pockets.

“He knew he was breaking the law, yet chose to overlook it for the opportunity of making what he wrongly assumed would be easy money, at the expense of the taxpayer.”

Upon sentencing, His Honour Judge Tabor QC, said: “The fraud had some sophistication about it…The nature of VAT submission is that it takes on trust what you say. The generation of these invoices was to cover the tracks of the fraud.”