the times | Tuesday April 5 2022 2GM 19
News
GUY BELL/ALAMYThe Duke of York was facing fresh
questions last night over why an alleged
fraudster was handed an award by his
Dragons’ Den-style competition for
entrepreneurs.
Selman Turk, a former banker, has
been accused of arranging a £750,
payment to Andrew days after he
received an award from the Pitch@Pal-
ace scheme in 2019.
Turk accrued the most votes by the
public and audience to win the
Pitch@Palace scheme’s “People’s
Choice” prize for his business Heyman
AI, a digital bank aimed at millennials,
which later went bust.
A number of participants said they
found Turk’s win unusual because he
“won it by miles” despite his pitch being
“crap”, according to The Guardian.
Turk and Pitch@Palace representa-
tives were yet to comment last night.
Nine days after winning the award,
Turk allegedly arranged a transfer of
£750,000 to Andrew, which was de-
scribed as a “wedding gift” for Princess
Beatrice, his elder daughter, in High
Court documents.
Turk has denied instructing Nebahat
Evyap Isbilen, a Turkish millionaire, to
make the payment to Andrew.
The duke has since repaid the money
and there is no suggestion of
wrongdoing on his part.
Details of the payment came to light
in a complex High Court case. Isbilen
has sued Turk over claims that he cost
her about £39.37 million while acting as
her financial adviser.
Meanwhile, The Times can reveal
that one of Andrew’s business associ-
ates was the director of a tax avoidance
company fined in a tribunal. A judge re-
buked Arthur Lancaster for being “eva-
sive” and HM Revenue and Customs
Thousands of British workers will take
part in a trial of the four-day week in
what is thought to be the world’s biggest
pilot scheme.
More than 3,000 employees at 60
companies will take part in the scheme,
which will run from June to December
and examine the impact of shorter
working weeks on conditions and pro-
ductivity. The pilot exceeds the 2,500-
member programme conducted in
Iceland by the government and the
council of the capital city, Reykjavik.
It will be managed by academics
from Oxford and Cambridge universi-Thousands join trial of four-day week
ties and Boston College in the United
States, in partnership with the 4 Day
Week Global campaign group, the
4 Day Week UK campaign and the
think tank Autonomy.
The pandemic, coupled with record
vacancies, has prompted many firms to
re-evaluate flexible working conditions
to retain staff. The number of vacancies
reached a record 1.3 million between
December last year and February, the
Office for National Statistics said.
The aim is to allow employees to
work full-time for four days rather than
five, with no loss of pay. The main rea-
son organisations are embracing it is to
retain staff in a competitive jobs market
and attract new talent, according toKyle Lewis, co-director of Autonomy.
The Royal Society of Biology, the
professional association, is among the
latest to join the pilot, along with Pres-
sure Drop, a London brewery, and Plat-
ten’s, a Norfolk fish and chip shop.
Yo Telecom, the computer games de-
veloper Hutch and MBL Seminars, a
training provider, are among the busi-
nesses that have already signed up.
Mark Downs, chief executive of the
Royal Society of Biology, said: “The
pandemic has taught us that long-
standing working practices can change
rapidly... The four-day week pilot is a
fantastic opportunity to challenge
another truism — that to deliver quali-
ty you must work long hours.”Arthi Nachiappan
Economics CorrespondentTowering talent This mixed media piece by the Italian artist Pierluigi Bossi Sibo, created in 1937, will be up for auction
at the Bonham’s Impressionist and Modern Art sale on April 7. Works by Miro, Matisse and Munch will also be for saleQuestions over
business award
for ‘fraudster’
linked to duke
claims the company owes about £3 mil-
lion to the taxman.
Last month Lancaster, an account-
ant, was named in a legal verdict that
said: “We have real concerns as to the
reliability of Mr Lancaster’s evidence.”
His involvement in the tax tribunal
centred on his role at the Knox Group,
a collection of companies established
by Doug Barrowman, who is married to
Baroness Mone.
In a judgment the Upper Tribunal
said that AML, part of the Knox Group,
had been “involved in providing ser-
vices in connection with various tax
avoidance structures to UK resident
taxpayers”. It said Lancaster’s state-
ments were “confused, lacking in can-
dour, in some respects incorrect and
littered with inconsistencies”.
Judges concluded: “Overall, we were
left with the impression that Mr Lan-
caster was evasive.”
AML was fined £150,000 for failing to
hand over records required to calculate
its tax bills for 2014 and 2015. HMRC
said the company had had a “campaign
of non-compliance”, with its bills esti-
mated to be more than £3 million.
Lancaster, 58, was a director of AML,
based in the Isle of Man, which was one
of the biggest promoters of a loan-
based tax avoidance scheme.
He was named as a director of
Pitch@Palace Global, the Duke of
York’s entrepreneurial initiative, in De-
cember 2020 and is also a director of
Urramoor, a company set up in 2013 to
manage the duke’s investments.
A spokesman for the duke said: “The
recent tribunal findings in relation to
an HMRC investigation in no way
relate to, or affect, any of the work
undertaken by Arthur Lancaster on
behalf of the duke.”
TaxWatch, an investigative think
tank, has reported Lancaster to the
Taxation Disciplinary Board.David Byers, Sabah Meddings,
Nadeem Badshah