Robert Venables KC, 78, a leading barrister at Old Square Tax Chambers, is alleged to have falsified his earnings declarations between 2014 and 2021. His trial is underway at Southwark Crown Court in London.

The tax barrister has been charged with three counts of cheating the public revenue related to earnings, and a company which he set up, all of which was repeatedly denied by the defence.

On the first day of the trial, the barrister for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Julian Christopher KC, claimed that Venables ‘paid almost £2m less tax than he should have done’ and had received his income as a tax barrister through an ‘elaborate system’.

Following the questioning of Venables’s gardener and ‘lifelong friend’, it was the turn of his long-term bookkeeper, Amanda West.

Wes