Ex-Dragon’s Den PR man sues HMRC over wrongful arrest
Richard Hillgrove, former PR advisor to stars of the hit BBC business programme Dragons Den, has announced that he is to sue HMRC for wrongful arrest.
Hillgrove, who quit the show at the end of season 3, was arrested in relation to a criminal charge for cheating the public revenue of £100k by the tax body and has launched a parallel action against his former accountants.
This charge saw Hillgrove and his family subjected to a dawn raid by four bullet proof vest wearing police officers, a dramtic move which Hillington labelled a 'face saving' exercise after a host of other charges, including money laundering, were dropped.
Commenting on the events Hillgrove, who also used to work for Northern and Shell, said: “They stormed the house, pulled my wife from her bed and told her 80 year old grandfather, who lives in an adjoining annex to take charge of our sick 20 month old daughter Lola who had early stage Chicken Pox, otherwise she would be given to Social Services”.
“To try and avoid egg on their faces, the Bristol HMRC team are trying to steer through a single charge taken completely out of context and without all the facts.
“The HMRC Officers, who questioned me at Taunton Police Station were completely unaware of any Time to Pay arrangement I made with HMRC that was in existence on the LLP which is evident in the taped interview I gave to them and also unaware that almost £70,000 had been made towards tax arrears on the LLP.
“When a key client went bust owing us £50,000 it put a lot of pressure on cashflow, hence the need for Time to Pay on VAT and Income Tax.
“This is a serious case of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing.
“The HMRC are looking for a trophy kill as their targets for criminal prosecutions have increased five-fold recently. The Gestapo like arrest is more akin to countries without democracies and something you’d expect to be done to drug smugglers not normal upstanding citizens. If someone is late filing or paying it is a civil matter and could have been dealt with an initial chat.
“The HMRC Officers made constant references and jibes during questioning as to ‘where is your cowboy hat?’ They said they had watched me wearing my trademark cowboy hat on the BBC News on YouTube.
“Like Harry Rednapp, I’m excellent at what I do, but the numbers side of the business is not my forte. I wrongly gave total responsibility for my financial affairs and filing to local accountants who botched it up so spectacularly that I had already removed them from having responsibility for my financial affairs.
“It is always my intention to pay my taxes. We simply had a cashflow issue. I am not a tax avoider. I don’t have any clever schemes set up. This is an administrative blunder by HMRC who haven’t been helped by local accountants protecting themselves by not providing a full disclosure of documents when approached with questions.
“An internal police source which I will not name has advised me and my lawyers that the case against the HMRC for wrongful arrest is extremely strong”.