Expat tax adviser faces a further 27 charges of theft and fraud
Founder of AzureTax now faces 56 charges involving more than HK$36m
PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 26 February, 2014, 5:53pm
UPDATED : Wednesday, 26 February, 2014, 7:42pm
Sijia Jiang [email protected]
Deborah Annells was arrested in December 2011 following a client's complaint but was not charged until November last year.
Deborah Annells, a well-known tax consultant to expatriates in Hong Kong, has been charged with 27 more counts of theft and fraud in addition to the 29 charges she already faces.
Annells, 55, who appeared in Eastern Court today, now faces a total of 56 charges – 51 counts of theft, four counts of fraud and one of possessing a false instrument – involving more than HK$36 million.
Annells, chief executive and founder of AzureTax, which arranges tax affairs for expatriates and sets up trust funds, was arrested in December 2011 following a client’s complaint but was not charged until November last year.
The South China Morning Post reported in November that 29 counts against her involved a sum of HK$25.4 million, with the alleged offences occurring between June 2009 and August 2011.
In three alleged frauds, she was accused of having falsely indicated funds were transferred, financial statements were accurate, and signatures were genuine, when in fact they were not. The theft cases mostly related to a debt owed to various Azure companies controlled by Azure Worldwide.
No plea was taken at today’s hearing and Principal Magistrate Bina Chainrai adjourned the case to April 4 for committal proceedings. She extended Annell’s bail terms of HK$250,000 and warned her not to contact the prosecution’s proposed witnesses.
In July the disciplinary body of Britain’s Chartered Institute of Taxation (CIOT) found she had committed six instances of dishonesty and expelled her. Two other professional bodies held preliminary investigations into her conduct.
Lawsuits ensued at the High Court, one by a client over an alleged £1 million (HK$12.4 million) of untransferred funds, while her landlord launched a suit over AzureTax’s allegedly unpaid office rent.
An announcement on AzureTax’s website says negotiations are underway to sell the company to Zetland Fiduciary Group Ltd, a Hong Kong based group, with the transaction to be completed early in 2014.
Annells came to Hong Kong in the 1980s and has worked at a string of accountancy firms such as Ernst & Young and Grant Thornton, and also for banks including HSBC.
She is a past president of the Rotary Club of Hong Kong, has sat on the general committee of the British Chamber of Commerce, and was chairman of its finance committee.
