Former Denmark international Marc Rieper has settled a long-running tax dispute with the Danish tax authorities over a company in the tax haven Panama. The terms of the settlement are confidential.
The settlement was reported on Thursday by DR Nyheder. Rieper and his wife had been sued by Skattestyrelsen at the district court in Aarhus. Because of the settlement, the case will not be assessed by a judge.
The court told DR in an email that Skatteforvaltningen gave notice on January 17, 2024, that the case had been settled. The court was asked to cancel the main hearing. The agreement is therefore more than two years old, but had not been described publicly until now.
Since no judge ruled in the matter, the outcome is confidential and DR does not know what the parties agreed. Rieper told DR that the case is private and declined to comment on the settlement.
A name in the Panama Papers
The dispute concerned the Panamanian company Bolsover Corp. Rieper’s name appeared in the Panama Papers, the global leak of millions of documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca published in 2016. According to the documents, he became the owner of the company in 2007, as DR reported at the time.
Rieper wrote in a text message back then that he knew nothing about the company. He stated that he had never had any cooperation with anyone in Panama. He also said he could not explain how the names ended up there.
In 2016 the Danish tax authorities paid a whistleblower 6.4 million kroner for information on Danes in the leak. In December 2018 Skattestyrelsen ruled that the company was taxable in Denmark. In early 2022 the authorities had the company declared bankrupt at the court in Aarhus.
Attorney Boris Frederiksen of Kammeradvokaten was appointed trustee to examine the company. DR has obtained his final report, dated November 2022, which had not been described publicly before. It found that the owners withdrew funds while the company built up arrears of 730,434.45 kroner to Skattestyrelsen.
When DR first wrote about the bankruptcy in April 2022, the tax authority’s claim in the estate was 614,698 kroner. Rieper said then that the couple disputed having any outstanding matters with the Danish tax authorities. He also said they contested any knowledge of owning a company abroad.
The settlement comes after DR reported last week that Rieper’s former national team colleague Allan Lund Nielsen was ordered to pay 5.5 million kroner by the Copenhagen City Court. Nielsen has appealed the judgment to the High Court.
DR has reviewed more than 20 judgments in the Panama complex, including one that reached the Supreme Court. In all of them, the tax authorities won in full. The cases are civil damages cases, so the courts have not ruled on criminal liability.
