We'd be met at airports in 20-foot limousines, and taken to places like the Atlantis hotel in Dubai or the Singapore Grand Prix. There'd be a hundred grand spent in the bar.
In 2013, Jas Bains was an ambitious young lawyer, enjoying the high life that came with working for an extremely profitable City hedge fund.
Today, he is jobless and has lost most of his wealth, having spent years fighting legal battles and attempting to clear his name of association with a huge tax scam.
The irony, he says, is that he blew the whistle on the scam in the first place – only to find himself one of the targets of a £1.4bn lawsuit.
He is reflecting one month after the case ended, bringing to a close eight years of legal arguments and one of the highest value civil cases ever heard in the UK.
The Danish tax authority was left licking its wounds, after failing to establish that a large group of defendants, including Mr. Bains, were liable for huge losses it had suffered.
It all began in 2009, when a banker named Sanjay Shah established a London-based hedge fund called Solo Capital. It also had offices in Dubai. It was one of a network of funds, banks, and legal outfits that were to become heavily implicated in the so-called cum-ex trade.
This focused on transactions where shares were sold from one investor to another immediately before the payment of a dividend but delivered afterwards. Those involved exploited delays in processing the sale to create confusion over who owned the shares at the moment the dividend was paid. This tactic allowed both parties to claim rebates on withholding tax - which had only been paid once when the dividend was issued.
From the outside, it was complicated, but for those involved, it led to ever bigger and more elaborate trades which ultimately cost taxpayers across Europe billions.
It initially became popular in Germany, before spreading to other countries including France, Belgium, Italy, and Austria. Solo Capital targeted Denmark, with the bulk of its cum-ex trades taking place from 2013 onwards.
Jas Bains joined the company in 2010, as its head lawyer, but went on to run the London office. At the time, Solo was a successful firm, making money in five or six different areas pretty well.
And making money meant enjoying the high life, with staff going on sprees to places like Las Vegas, Singapore, and Dubai.
What I will say about Sanjay is he knew how to throw a party, he recalls.
However, by mid-2014, Mr. Bains had fallen out with his boss and left the company for a competitor. Despite moving on, he was still hearing of escalating trades targeting Denmark. Alarm bells went off when he learned of the staggering amounts at play.
In 2015, concerned about the implications of these trades, he chose to blow the whistle, contacting Danish authorities and assisting them with their investigations which ultimately focused on Mr. Shah, who is now imprisoned in Denmark.
But when the Danish tax authority launched its case against him and more than 100 defendants, Mr. Bains found it impossible to continue his career. In October, however, the High Court ruled in his favor, emphasizing that the Danish authority failed to demonstrate they were victims of deception.
This verdict offers Mr. Bains a chance to start afresh, though challenges still lie ahead in repairing his damaged reputation and career.
