We bring to your attention the excerpts from Richard Branson’s autobiography “Losing My Virginity.” Excerpts indicate that the world-famous corporation Virgin Group would have not existed today, if its founder Richard Branson had been arrested for tax evasion in the early beginning of his career …<\/p>\n
<...><\/p>\n
Richard Branson \u201cLosing My Virginity\u201d1<\/sup><\/strong><\/p>\n Chapter 5. Learning a lesson<\/strong><\/p>\n Throughout the spring of 1971, Virgin Mail Order attracted many more\u00a0customers. But, although the company was growing, we were losing\u00a0money. We offered large discounts on all records and, by the time we\u00a0had spent money on the telephone calls to order them, paid for the\u00a0postage, and accounted for the staff and the shops, we weren’t keeping\u00a0up.<\/p>\n Sometimes our customers pretended that they hadn’t received the records\u00a0so we would have to send out a second copy, and often a third and a All in all we were gradually losing money, and before long we were\u00a015,000 pounds overdrawn.<\/p>\n In the spring I received an order from Belgium for a large number of\u00a0records. I went to the record companies that published those records\u00a0and bought them without paying the purchase tax which we had to pay on\u00a0records sold in the UK. I then borrowed a van and drove down to Dover\u00a0to take the ferry across to France and then drive on to Belgium. Some\u00a0papers were stamped at Dover to confirm that so many records had been\u00a0exported, but when I arrived at Calais I was asked for another\u00a0document, a carnet which proved I wasn’t going to sell them en route in\u00a0France. The British and the French authorities both charged purchase\u00a0tax on records, while Belgium charged nothing, so the records in my van\u00a0were effectively bonded stock. I did not have this carnet, and to my\u00a0disappointment was forced to go back to Dover on the ferry, with the\u00a0records still in my van.<\/p>\n However, as I drove back to London, it dawned on me that I was now\u00a0carrying a van load of records that had apparently been exported. I\u00a0even had the customs stamp to prove it. The fact that the French\u00a0customs had not allowed me through France was unknown. I had paid no\u00a0purchase tax on these records, so I could sell them either by mail\u00a0order or at the Virgin shop and make about 5,000 more profit than I\u00a0could have done by the legal route. Two or three more trips like this\u00a0and we would be out of debt.<\/p>\n <\u2026.><\/p>\n It was acriminal plan, and I was breaking the law. But I had always got away\u00a0with breaking rules before. In those days I felt that I could do no\u00a0wrong and that, even if I did, I wouldn’t be caught.<\/p>\n <\u2026><\/p>\n The next morning I was due to make what I hoped would be my final trip\u00a0down to Dover, pretending to export records. By this time I had made The telephone rang at around midnight. The caller refused to give his\u00a0name, but what he had to say was terrifying. He warned me that my\u00a0bogus trips to the Continent had been noticed and that I was about to\u00a0be raided by the Customs and Excise office. He said that, if I bought\u00a0an ultraviolet sun lamp from a chemist’s shop and shone it on the\u00a0records that I had bought from EMI, I would notice a fluorescent “E’\u00a0stamped on the vinyl of all the ones that were meant to have been\u00a0exported to Belgium. He told me that I would be raided first thing\u00a0tomorrow morning. When I thanked him, he told me he was helping me\u00a0because I had once stayed up late talking to a suicidal friend of his\u00a0who had called the Student Advisory Centre. I suspected that he was a\u00a0customs officer.<\/p>\n I called Nik and Tony and rushed out to buy two sun lamps from a\u00a0late-night chemist on Westbourne Grove.<\/p>\n We met at South Wharf Road and started pulling records out of their\u00a0sleeves. The ghastly truth was revealed: an “E’ shone up at us from\u00a0all the records we had bought from EMI for export. We began to run in\u00a0and out of the warehouse carrying piles of records into the van. We\u00a0then made a terrible mistake: we assumed that the Customs and Excise\u00a0officers would just raid the South Wharf warehouse. We therefore drove\u00a0all the records round to the Oxford Street shop and put them in the\u00a0racks to be sold. We had no idea that Customs and Excise officers have\u00a0greater powers of immediate search than the police. I had a similar\u00a0attitude to when the Church Commissioners used to come to Albion\u00a0Street:\u00a0it was all some great game and I found it difficult to take very\u00a0seriously. By the early hours of the morning we had taken all the\u00a0“E’-stamped records to the Oxford Street shop, and substituted some\u00a0bona fide records for the warehouse stock.<\/p>\n <\u2026><\/p>\n At the South Wharf Road warehouse, we unlocked the doors and walked\u00a0upstairs. But before we could reach my office there was a knock on the\u00a0door. I opened it to find seven or eight men in brown macs.<\/p>\n “Are you Richard Branson?” they said.<\/p>\n “We’re Customs and Excise and we’ve got a warrant to inspect your These men were rather different from the two dowdy little accountants I\u00a0had been expecting. They were bulky, tough men, and very threatening.\u00a0Some of my cock sureness evaporated as I showed them into the\u00a0warehouse.<\/p>\n “You’re meant to have gone to Belgium yesterday,” one of them said.<\/p>\n “You can’t get back this quickly.”<\/p>\n I tried to laugh this off as I watched them begin to check all the\u00a0records with their ultraviolet lamp. They grew increasingly worried\u00a0when they couldn’t find any marked records. I enjoyed their confusion,\u00a0trying to conceal my hope that we would get away with it. We began\u00a0helping to check all the records, handing them the records from the\u00a0sleeves and restocking them on the shelves.<\/p>\n What I didn’t realise until it was too late was that they were\u00a0simultaneously busting our shops in Oxford Street and Liverpool, and\u00a0finding hundreds of marked records.<\/p>\n “All right.” One of the officers put down the 99 telephone.<\/p>\n “They’ve found them. You’d better come with me. I’m arresting you.\u00a0Come down to Dover with us and make a statement.”<\/p>\n I couldn’t believe it. I had always thought that only criminals werearrested: it hadn’t occurred to me that I had become one. I had been\u00a0stealing money from Customs and Excise. It wasn’t some great game\u00a0about my getting one up on the Customs and Excise office and getting\u00a0off scot-free: I was guilty.<\/p>\n At Dover I was charged under Section 301 of the Customs and Excise Act\u00a01952: “That on 28 May 1971 at Eastern Docks, Dover, you caused to be\u00a0delivered to an officer a ship’s manifest, being a document produced\u00a0for the purpose of an assigned matter namely Customs, which was untrue\u00a0in a material particular in that it purported to show the exportation\u00a0of 10,000 gramophone records .. .”<\/p>\n <\u2026><\/p>\n Over the summer I confronted the problem with far less shame than I\u00a0would have done if my parents had added to the burden. I kept a clear\u00a0head; I was sorry; I wouldn’t do it again; and I negotiated an\u00a0out-of-court settlement with the Customs and Excise office. The tax\u00a0authorities in the UK are more interested in extracting money than\u00a0going through expensive court cases.<\/p>\n On 18 August 1971 I agreed to pay 15,000 pounds as an immediate\u00a0payment, with 45,000 pounds to be paid in three instalments over the\u00a0next three years. The total was calculated as being three times the\u00a0illegal profit which Virgin had made from avoiding the purchase tax. If\u00a0I paid off the sums agreed, I would avoid a criminal record. But, if I\u00a0failed to pay it, I would be rearrested and tried.<\/p>\n <...><\/p>\n Footnotes:<\/em><\/p>\n 1<\/sup> Source: Branson, Richard. \u201cLosing My Virginity\u201d\/ The Autobiography. \u2013 London: Virgin Books LTD, 1998. \u2013 Free download is available at: http:\/\/alfalib.com\/book\/read\/id\/111825.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tales"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24994,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/24994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kmp.ua\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nfourth and so on.<\/p>\n
\nthree trips and 12,000 profit. This last trip would provide enough\u00a0money to pay off our overdraft. I could then give up the scam and\u00a0concentrate on the business. It is impossible to know whether we\u00a0really would have stopped since making such easy money is addictive,\u00a0but that was our intention. That morning I loaded up the van with\u00a0records once again and set off for Dover. This time I was even more\u00a0casual than normal and after my papers were stamped I didn’t even\u00a0bother going on the ferry but simply drove around the dock and headed\u00a0back for London.<\u2026><\/p>\n
\nstock.”<\/p>\n