The director of a controversial spoof documentary on Nigel Farage and UKIP will be appearing in Southwark Crown Court on Friday of this week, charged with cheating the public revenue.
Chris Atkins, a journalist and film-maker who gave evidence to the Leveson Inquiry, is accused of perpetrating a £2.5 million tax fraud plot along with twelve others. The Crown Prosecution Service say he was involved in a complex five-year scam to cheat the taxman, including seven investment bankers, the Ham and High reported at the time.
Mr Atkins directed the controversial programme which has caused anger amongst the party’s supporters before it has even been aired for featuring race riots and a melt down in the country after 100 days of a UKIP government being in power.
The plot is timed three months into Britain’s first UKIP government where pubs are filled again with smokers, border guards are forcibly repatriating illegal immigrants and there are race riots on the street. Border police storm Indian restaurants, while neo-Nazi gangs are seen supporting the party, which for years has banned any member of an extremist political organisation including the BNP and Hope Not Hate, from being members of the libertarian organisation.
Splicing footage of Mr Farage with staged scenes of shaven headed crowds cheering his words, its entire motive seems to be to warn people that civil unrest will occur should they vote UKIP in May.
Ian Hyland, the TV critic for the left-wing Daily Mirror which usually revels in anything anti-UKIP even described the project as ‘a bit pointless’ saying it was only useful if all Channel 4 cared about was mentions on twitter.
Just watched UKIP: The First 100 Days (C4, tomorrow night) All a bit pointless, unless all C4 cares about is trending on Twitter.
— Ian Hyland (@HylandIan) February 15, 2015
In 2011, Atkins gave evidence to the Leveson inquiry into press standards which included a 30 minute excerpt from a previous production, Starsuckers.
The accusation (Case No. T20147034) is that the scheme supposedly enabled the investment bankers, three of whom are former employees of Royal Bank of Scotland which had to be bailed out by the tax payer because or irresponsible lending and deposit to lending ratios, to submit bogus tax returns to claim tax relief on losses between January 2007 and February 2012.
A team of forensic accountants have been enlisted to trawl through information relevant to the case.
Southwark Crown Court confirmed to Breitbart London that a pre trial hearing is taking place this Friday, 20th February with the trial, which is split into three parts, due to commence in April.
A CPS spokesman said in connection to the case: “May I remind all concerned that these individuals have a right to a fair trial. It is very important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings. For these reasons, it would be inappropriate for me to comment further.”
A spokesperson from Channel 4 commented: “The Ofcom Broadcasting Code is clear. We are not in an election period under the Code.”
Breitbart London tried to contact Mr Atkins via his lawyers but have not received a response.
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