Lee Rosser, who is serving a 8 ½ -year prison term for alcohol investment frauds was ordered today, at Southwark Crown Court, to pay over £ ½ million in confiscation.
Background
Lee Rosser (32), earlier this year was handed consecutive prison terms in two trials concerning conspiracies to defraud investors in (i) a malt whisky scheme and (ii) a "millennium champagne" scheme. His fellow conspirators, in the whisky fraud, were Julian Blee and Lewis Daulby and, in the champagne fraud, Julian Blee and Craig Dean. All are now serving custodial sentences.
(For details of those convictions see SFO web-site www.sfo.gov.uk. Click "News", then select 2001 and see Press releases of 25 March and 8 February).
Following these convictions, the SFO continued to trace defendants' assets. Rosser is the first to have confiscation judgement passed.
Confiscation
The court heard today that though Rosser's imputed share in a fraud, estimated to gross over £20 million, was around £5 million, his actual benefit could not be ascertained because of the large number of cash transactions conducted by him. Rosser claimed that because he made a number of unsecured loans to business associates and that he had maintained an expensive life-style in Gibraltar (from where the whisky fraud was operated) and in Spain, his realisable assets were few. Included in these assets were property in Gibraltar, a couple of garages in Wimbledon, a painting and a Cartier watch. The court also heard that he had given money to a Senora Carmen Guillen, a one-time girlfriend, so that she could purchase a villa in Marbella, which is estimated to be worth £250,000. It was, Rosser claimed, to compensate her for his broken promise of marriage.
Judge Laurie said that Rosser's evidence with regard to his assets was "suffused with dishonesty" and that the records showed that he had undertaken a "torrent of withdrawals from his bank account" and that his actions were "more consistent with disbursement" of his assets. Rosser was ordered to pay £519,000.
The SFO told the court that the "thousands of investors" in these frauds had lost around £10 million and asked for the confiscated sum to be returned to victims as compensation. This aspect is to be heard at a later date.
