Nouveau World Wines/Finbow Wines trial: closing speeches

Defendants:

Simon Robert Dempsey

Rebecca Louise McDonald

Daniel Thomas Snelling

Dina Louise Snelling

The case before His Honour Judge Michael Grieve QC  is in Court 8 at Southwark CrownCourt, London SE1.

The defendants have pleaded not guilty to the charges. 

 

By the middle of last week the trial had moved into the closing speeches with just the judge's summing up and directions to the jury before the jury retires to consider its verdict. 

Prosecution: Julian Christopher QC

Starting his closing speech Julian Christopher invited the jury to take a step back and consider the overview. Was Nouveau World Wines a fraud or was it a question of theft by Sultan Trad and then Reset along with incompetence from Winevaults? Reset was based in Spain with its registered office in Cyprus, an island it couldn't spell correctly on its correspondence. Was it likely that Nouveau World Wines would have the misfortunate to be shafted by its suppliers twice in succession?

In his police interview in March 2010 Daniel Snelling spoke of a 15%-25% mark up on the wines. Now in his evidence to the court he claimed it was much higher – up to 50%. What he told the police in 2010 is more likely to be accurate. The higher mark up now cited by Snelling is an attempt to hide the huge discrepancy between the wine actually bought and the amount that was sold to the investors.

Over the period covered, Nouveau World Wines spent just under £450,000. If Sultan Trad was giving Nouveau credit then at a 20% mark up they would have been extending Nouveau £1 million in credit, while at 50% it would have been £1.5 million credit. 

Regarding the claims of wine lost through inefficiency at Winevaults, the wrong years for Mollydooker and the Greenock Creek Apricot Block "doesn't begin to explain what happened to the 36,000 bottles the investors thought they had bought".

There was a complete lack of any records of what had been bought, what had been sold and how many bottles there were left. Then the false paperwork - invoices from Global Cellars -  created at the end of March and beginning of April 2009 when Mr Streeter from the Companies Investigation Branch was looking into the company. The invoices were adjusted with the prices for the wines lowered. The second set of invoices were created on Dina Snelling's laptop, which had her name as the log in and her fingerprints were found on the laptop.

Christopher said that Dina Snelling and Rebecca McDonald were brought into the conspiracy because being family members they could be trusted by Daniel Snelling. His sister and cousin filled that role perfectly. Bringing in strangers to the administration would have meant that they would discover the truth.

Diana's account of sending two large packages of investors' documentation out to Winevaults in Australia was clearly a fabrication. There was no email traffic between Nouveau and Winevaults when the packages didn't arrive. 

Rebecca McDonald did not set up records when she joined in September 2008. The records were created when Streeter started his investigation. McDonald's account made no sense - she chose a ridiculous system that made amending and updating of the records very laborious.

Finbow

Simon Dempsey, Dina Snelling's boyfriend, was brought in to hide the trail of money from Nouveau to Finbow. The reason given for Dempsey being brought on board was that he could speak French. However, this skill was never used. Investors in Finbow paid out £2 million but only two containers of wine were sent to Hong Kong with each container carrying around £12,000 of wine, while the third container went to Nigeria. Investors paid for around one million bottles of wine.

Finbow was clearly Daniel Snelling's company - he owned it and ran it. However, when interviewed by the police Daniel Snelling claimed that he was only a consultant to Finbow employed because of his network of contacts in France, Italy and the UK. If asked, he would assist in the sourcing of wine and would give advice. Simon Dempsey and Paul Rees were running Finbow. He did not know the politics of the company. The reality was very different - Finbow was Daniel Snelling. 

With Finbow none of the lessons of Nouveau were learnt. No records were kept. If it had been a legitimate business they would have been. 

When Rebecca McDonald left in February 2010 Daniel had to call Dina back from Australia to run the office. He needed someone in place who he could trust.

Dorian Lovell-Pank - counsel for Daniel Snelling

Lovell-Pank began his speech in defence of Daniel Snelling by quoting Confucius "man, who skates on this ice must skate fast". He claimed that Julian Christopher had swept through the case in his closing speech. The prosecution's case was based on the ideal world not the real world that we know. Their case is based on businesses run in a particular way - an ideal model. In the real world there are business failures, mistakes are made, records are not always up to date.

"The whole thing unravelled into an awful mess." "Failure is not the same thing as crime. This was not a criminal enterprise. The defendants are never criminals. The people running these businesses are not crooks."

This took court proceedings up to the close of Wednesday 26th June. I have been unable to get to court since then and will not be back in court before Wednesday 3rd July. 

Nouveau World Wines/ Finbow 24th-25th June: Rebecca McDonald's evidence

24th June 2013

Rebecca (Becky) McDonald gave evidence to her defence counsel: Steve Bailey. She had started on Friday - I was not present in court for this. 

Much of her evidence was taken up with going through invoices and payments made by Finbow Wines with Rebecca McDonald giving details of the various payments. I assume that a similar exercise had been conducted by her counsel with payments made during McDonald’s time with Nouveau World Wines. She started there in September 2008.  

McDonald explained that she was involved with accounts covering sales and clients but not after-sales. She had no way of knowing how much wine had been bought, not involved in buying wine and she had no influence over company decisions.

 Among the invoices was one to Eurodirect in July 2009 for the purchase of 6000 leads to be used for the start up of Finbow Wines Ltd. 

McDonald believed that Finbow’s ‘Buy Back Guarantee’ was genuine. She was “horrified to hear a recording of ‘manipulative bullying’ sales tactics. Had she known of this in September 2009 she “would have walked away – would have resigned”.

 She was “horrified that some investors had paid in £150,000 and had nothing to show for it but had no idea” that this was happening. McDonald thought that enough wine was being bought – “thousands of bottles of wine sufficient to cover the wine bought by investors”. She had nothing to do with the brokers.

 McDonald was taken through a number of invoices and payments to Paul Kelly and his various companies by her counsel. The invoices showed that Kelly was arranged to pay the rent for some people in Finbow including Daniel Snelling and xxxxxx as well as for various cars including a Porsche, which she queried, a Range Rover, a Q 5 (Audi) and a TT Audi. Kelly charged a commission which varied between 10%-15%.

McDonald had a BMW, which she bought seven years ago in a one-off payment of £13,000 before she joined Nouveau/Finbow. Her mortgage payments came out of her salary of £30,000 a year and she received no bonuses.

McDonald explained that often she had to make the transfers before receiving an invoice from Paul Kelly and that she often had to chase him on several occasion to obtain and invoice. “I tried my hardest to keep a track of what was going out.” In October 2009 she created a series of spread sheets detailing payments for cars, rents etc and set them at the end of every month to Daniel and to xxxxxx.

Asked about a company called M to M Ltd, McDonald replied that this “was part of Daniel’s wider plans”.  She was acting under instructions from others in the company and in December 2009 had no concerns over the company’s credibility.  Bailey asked her about a series of duplicate invoices – one showing payments required for cars, rents etc. with a second one for wine for the same amount. McDonald said that she had not seen the invoices for wine. She had no idea who had put the second invoices into the file but that these invoices could have been filed by other people in the office. 

At the end of January 2010 McDonald decided that she could no longer continue to work for Finbow and on 29th January sent a letter to Paul Rees, then Finbow’s director, saying she was resigning with immediate effect but would work out her one month notice period. ‘It had been a real pleasure working with you’ (Rees).McDonald explained that she was not comfortable with the amount of money going out of the company. “I was spending more time in the bank than in the office. It was impossible to keep on top of it. She had not spoken to Daniel because he was stepping back from the company.McDonald was then questioned by Simon Dempsey’s counsel. Her previous employment had been with KPMG where she had worked for 14 years as a PA to one of the senior partners managing his diary. She was line manger for support staff. There was no accountancy involved. She earned £34,000 a year. At Nouveau/Finbow her salary was £30,000.

In January 2010 large amounts of cash were going out Finbow. “Money was being spent like it was going out of fashion….so much cash was going out”. Back in October she hadn’t questioned it because there was “a lot of money coming in”. “The month to month bills were being covered.” In January 2010 much more cash was going out of the company than was coming in. McDonald became concerned – “this is not right”.      

Tuesday 25th

Cross-examination by Julian Christopher
McDonald explained that she started at Nouveau in September 2008 to help Dina Snelling with the admin. At the time “there were no records to speak of – no proper paperwork in place”. Her job was to sort out the paperwork. She shared an office with Dina Snelling and had a chat with Dina about recordkeeping but no detailed discussion.  McDonald dealt with the paperwork that was there. She did not deal with records of how much wine was bought and had nothing to do with the stock of wine. McDonald set up a system for recording investors’ purchases. 

Christopher asked her about the CIB (Companies Investigation Branch) investigation by Mr Streeter in March and April 2009. He suggested that the records had been created to answer Streeter’s questions about how much wine had been bought by investors and how much had been purchased by the company. Rather than being created in September 2008, they were created in March 2009. McDonald said that this was not correct. She had set up the system in September 2008 and that it was a work in progress. There was reference to a document that post-dated Streeter’s investigation but McDonald agreed that an earlier version would have been shown to him. Christopher asked why only clients with surnames A-K were recorded and that for many investors listed the column referring to stock in Winevaults was blank. McDonald did not know. She didn’t think that she had put those columns into the document and after she had created the template she had passed it over to Dina for it to be kept up to date. Christopher also asked her why the filing system adopted was so cumbersome for new names of investors.  

During Streeter’s investigation she had asked Daniel Snelling for details of inventory at Winevaults but he did not produce it. Only a few big investors had their own accounts at Winevaults. The rest of the wine was in the Nouveau World Wines account at Winevaults. When Daniel Snelling returned from Australia in early May 2009 he said that he had been shafted and that only half the wine that Nouveau World Wines had ordered had actually been purchased. McDonald said she believed that Daniel was referring to Sultan Trad here.She had no dealings with the Global Wine invoices. Dina Snelling’s evidence was that Becky had been involved. She had no dealings with Riddingtons (accountants in Sidcup), over wine stocks – Daniel Snelling handled this.

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McDonald was asked about a complaint from investor Peter Podmore that involved an exchange of emails on 4th and 9th March. Podmore was querying why some of the wines that he had bought were not in storage at Winevaults in Sydney, Australia. He was threatening to expose Nouveau through a blog post and was demanding a full return of his money. Podmore had been in contact with Winevaults.

On 9th March Dina Snelling sent an email to Winevaults that there was 'a discrepancy' over Podmore's paperwork. McDonald was copied into this email. The same day Dina sent an email to Podmore telling him that ‘there is a discrepancy’ in you wine stocks and ‘until I hear from Winevaults themselves I can’t give you the information you require’. McDonald was not copied into this email. Christopher said that Winevaults were being told one thing and Podmore another.   

On the advice of Riddingtons Nouveau World Wine was put into liquidation. McDonald explained that Finbow was always part of Daniel’s plans. Although Simon Dempsey was the director, it was Daniel’s company. He was running the company and owned it. The advice from Riddingtons was that Daniel Snelling might to barred as a director because of what had happened to Nouveau World Wines.

Use of false namesWhen Finbow was starting up McDonald was asked to change the name she used in the office in order to hide the connection with Nouveau World Wines - not to link Finbow and Nouveau.

She declined to use a false name but did use her second name Louise rather than Rebecca. Others in the company did change their false names for the changeover from Nouveau to Finbow. Michael Lancaster (Michael Snelling) became Michael Jones. Lucy Jones (Dina Snelling) became Harriet Harbridge, while Daniel Snelling was known as Aston. McDonald said the use of false names did not concern her - she was used to the traders using them. Christopher asked whether Dina Snelling was an opener at Finbow.  He remarked that Dina Snelling had kept the name Lucy Jones during the time of Nouveau World Wines for the sake of 'consistency'. Now the change of name was to "avoid consistency".