Fugitive tax fraudster jailed in UK after going on the run in Spain

A RUNAWAY tax fraudster will begin a six-year jail sentence after being extradited to the UK from Spain.

South African Leib Berger, 53, who went under the name Lawrence Goldberg, had been jailed for two years in 2011 for stealing more than €1.1 million through a Self Assessment tax fraud.

Posing as a nominated tax agent, he hijacked innocent people’s identities and invented other clients to send fraudulent tax returns to the UK’s HMRC.

In December 2012, Berger was ordered to repay £249,999 to the HMRC by December 2013 or receive a default prison sentence of 16 months.

He fled to Spain instead, where he remained as a fugitive.

It was then revealed that Berger was hiding further assets, leading authorities to increase the amount he had to pay back to £1.5 million.

Just four weeks later, the default prison sentence was amended to six years.

Berger was eventually tracked down and arrested in Spain on February 7 of this year, before being extradited yesterday.

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Laurence Dollimore

Laurence Dollimore is a Spanish-speaking, NCTJ-trained journalist with almost a decade’s worth of experience.
The London native has a BA in International Relations from the University of Leeds and and an MA in the same subject from Queen Mary University London.
He earned his gold star diploma in multimedia journalism at the prestigious News Associates in London in 2016, before immediately joining the Olive Press at their offices on the Costa del Sol.
After a five-year stint, Laurence returned to the UK to work as a senior reporter at the Mail Online, where he remained for two years before coming back to the Olive Press as Digital Editor in 2023.
He continues to work for the biggest newspapers in the UK, who hire him to investigate and report on stories in Spain.
These include the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Mail Online, Mail on Sunday and The Sun and Sun Online.
He has broken world exclusives on everything from the Madeleine McCann case to the anti-tourism movement in Tenerife.

GOT A STORY? Contact newsdesk@theolivepress.es or call +34 951 273 575 Twitter: @olivepress

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