A HOTELIER who lives in Alicante has admitted six money-laundering charges in the Royal Court.
Martin John Hill (56) appeared in front of the court via videolink from his Costa Blanca home and pleaded guilty to using a Jersey bank account to hide money he obtained through tax fraud in the UK.
Between 2014 and 2016, Hill made inaccurate tax declarations to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for two hotels, the Burlington Hotel in Sandown and the Shanklin Beach Hotel, both in the Isle of Wight. He lied about how much the hotels made and gave customers invoices with the wrong VAT number, the court heard.
He under-declared sales for the hotels and pocketed the VAT he charged guests.
In 2019, Hill was sentenced for three charges of VAT evasion at Southwark Crown Court.
He was jailed for 30 months and banned from being a company director for seven years.
The hotelier has now pleaded guilty to six charges of money laundering in Jersey in relation to the fraudulent funds.
Hill admitted that he had transferred the money from a UK account with Tesco Bank to an account at Santander International’s Jersey branch.
In 2017, he transferred £165,500, then £10,000, and then £86,500 to Jersey.
He also admitted one count of possessing the proceeds of criminal conduct, which amounted to over £340,000 held in a Jersey bank account.
He pleaded guilty to one count of removing fraudulent money from Jersey by transferring the majority of the above figure to a Spanish bank account.
Hill sent £340,500 from his Jersey account to an account at Spanish bank Caixa-Bank in January 2018.
The final charge that he pleaded guilty to was converting criminal money.
The court head that Hill had converted a total of £28,487 to 31,392 euros within his Jersey bank account during May 2017 and June 2018.
Hill pleaded not guilty to the seventh charge of removing criminal property from the Island.
This charge centred around a claim that he had allegedly sent 26,605 euros of criminal money from Jersey to Spain – using bank transfers, cash withdrawals and debit-card spending.
The Crown did not produce any evidence for this final charge and it was dropped.
Hill was bailed on condition that he must reside at his Alicante address.
He will have to travel to Jersey to be sentenced on 21 November. Crown Advocate Sam Brown was prosecuting, and Hill was represented by Advocate Ian Jones.
The Deputy Bailiff, Robert MacRae, was presiding. The Jurats sitting were David Le Heuzé and Alison Opfermann.
