Crooked accountant is ‘disgrace to profession’

An accountant who tried to swindle the taxman out of £300,000 using a sham company was spared jail by a judge who branded him a ‘disgrace to the profession’. Richard Braysher, 72, cooked up accounts for fake export company ‘High Tech’ to illegally claim £293,468 in VAT repayments between 2015 and 2017. HMRC flagged the first claim as suspicious and withheld repayment but ‘in error’ paid out £63,935 for the second of the seven false claims made by the bogus…