Robert Venables: Princess Diana barrister accused of setting up ‘elaborate’ system to avoid paying £2m in tax

A lawyer who formerly worked for Princess Diana is in court for allegedly evading nearly £2 million in taxes.

Robert Venables KC is accused of failing to properly report his income for seven years while working as one of the nation’s leading tax lawyers.

In his evidence at Southwark Crown Court, Venables took aim at “so-called experts” within HMRC, saying: “Standards have fallen.”

Stating that his customers include artists, aristocrats, big companies and sports stars, Venables explained that he also owns the copyrights of his books from time to time.

“She was the most famous woman in the world after the Queen,” he said, implying that Diana was a former client without directly using her name.

“He died in a car accident in Paris.”

Venables faces three tax evasion charges over his annual returns on his earnings and is accused of setting up an “elaborate” system for his income as a lawyer, meaning he did not pay tax on some of his earnings.

The lawyer who gave evidence recalled how he sent authorities “incandescent” when he won a case over inheritance tax in the 1980s.

“They were so sure they were right that all five judges in the House of Lords got it wrong,” he said.

Venables said he remembered civil servants at the former Customs and Excise having “little interest in the law” but was more impressed by the “quality” of workers at the Inland Revenue.

He told the court he believed the merger of the two institutions in 2005 was aimed at raising legal standards, but said: “I’m afraid standards have fallen.

“There are all kinds of so-called experts these days who are pretty sure they know everything about everything.

“They don’t get outside advice and they don’t get inside advice.

“They are difficult to deal with, they are much more opinionated, much more certain that they are right, and I am afraid the combination of the two did not go as planned.”

As the trial began, prosecutor Julian Christopher KC said Venables had portrayed himself as an “enemy of HMRC” in his career and had represented taxpayers challenging HMRC over controversial tax bills.

Venables is being prosecuted, saying he “misrepresented the amount of his income for taxation purposes” over annual self-assessments he made to HMRC between 2014 and 2021.

The court heard KC channeled his profits through an entity called the RVQC Partnership, where he was the sole income earner but the profits were distributed to partners, including himself, allegedly to reduce his tax liability.

It is alleged that the money paid to his gardener and maid was part of tax evasion.

Venables, who denied the charges, told jurors he had had good relationships with some people at HMRC throughout his career and had even made supportive suggestions about greater transparency of tax avoidance schemes.

The Oxford-educated South Yorkshire-born lawyer said he came from a modest background, raising pigs, chickens and ducks in the backyard to raise extra money.

Venables told jurors he grew up in a house he described as a “Coronation Street house”, lit by candles and kerosene lamps, heated by an open fire and with a single cold water tap.

Venables told the court his parents “put family first”: “We may not have had a lot of money, but we didn’t really feel deprived.

“I was about to start school right before my fifth birthday, and they (his parents) sat me down and said to me, ‘Robert, if you want something in life, you have to work for it.'”

Venables said he won a scholarship to go to Grammar School and then settled at Merton College, Oxford, to study the classics.

During his university education he worked as a postman, a waiter, a barman and in an iron foundry in South Yorkshire, before turning to law with his second two-year degree at Oxford.

He told jurors that during an unsuccessful bid to be appointed as a solicitor in the courts, he was told he was “a bit of a jerk” and “lacked the social graces and graces”.

He said he saw an NHS speech therapist to improve the clarity of his speech and took night classes at the City Literary Institute, which “taught me how to project my voice”.

After working as an academic at Oxford, he gained a place at Chambers and had a “very rapid rise”, he said.

He added: “I started late at 32, but it took off quickly.”

Venables will continue his defense on Thursday. The trial continues.