2025-06-13
54 分钟This is The Guardian.
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The Secrets of Stephen David Jones by Hetty O'Brien, read by Simon Vance.
Ewan Mackay is a quiet, trusting man with a lifelong passion for golf.
Growing up in the 1950s in Angus, a windswept county on Scotland's east coast, he found the sport a perfect outlet, a shared activity that reduced the pressures of socialising.
Later, as an adult, golfing allowed him to rub shoulders with wealthy farmers, who became useful contacts for his expanding business, selling Scottish seed potatoes to English farms.
Once he sold that business, Mackay had enough money to follow his dreams and create a course of his own.
In 2002, Mackay bought a plot of land in St Andrews and secured planning permission for a golf course and private members club.
But two years later he received an offer of 20 million pounds to buy the land.
It was the kind of sum you couldn't turn down, he recalled.
He made a profit of 13 million pounds from the sale.
And while he was golfing down in Kent in 2004, a friend suggested he ought to meet a solicitor called Stephen David Jones, who was a master at whittling down tax bills.
He said, what are you doing about tax, Mackay told me.
And I said, I wasn't thinking about tax, I just pay it.
And he said, I can introduce you to someone brilliant.
When Mackay spoke to Jones, the lawyer suggested that he put his money into a trust on the Caribbean island of Nevis.
Jones' law firm would act as the trustee, and Mackay's children would be registered as the beneficiaries.
This, Jones explained, was the smartest way of arranging his tax affairs.
Mackay did his due diligence on Jones, inviting him up to Dundee to meet lawyers he knew.