The American Lawyer Highlights Hughes Hubbard’s Success Representing SKAT in $1.1B Tax Fraud Litigation

Nov. 19, 2025 – The American Lawyer highlighted Hughes Hubbard’s successes and strategies in representing the Customs and Tax Administration of the Kingdom of Denmark, or Skatteforvaltningen (SKAT), in its ongoing multi-district litigation to recover $1.1 billion from a tax fraud scheme involving fraudulent claims for refunds on tax withheld from Danish dividends.

The article details the “stellar work” the Hughes Hubbard team, led by partners Marc Weinstein and Neil Oxford, has been doing on the matter since 2018. This includes a $500 million verdict in the first bellwether U.S. jury trial and the securing of a $165 million judgment in another bench trial, in addition to a number of settlements.

In total, Hughes Hubbard has collected more than $440 million for SKAT and, through the trial work, secured additional judgments of more than $600 million.

The article breaks down the unique way the Hughes Hubbard team approached the case, opting to pursue it as a multi-district litigation, which streamlined the case management significantly, to the ultimate benefit of the client.

“We thought it would be a very useful—if novel—strategy here once we filed all these claims, which were in 11 or 12 different jurisdictions, to use the [multi-district litigation] statute and coordinate them so we’re not dealing with 11 different discovery deadlines, 11 different judges ruling on the revenue rule,” Oxford said. “So that was ultimately a very successful strategy for us and for the client.”

It also discusses how the firm dealt with the defense effort to frame SKAT as “the Danish IRS,” a strategy that proved advantageous during the trials.

“We're not claiming these defendants needed to pay tax. They didn’t owe any tax. They were never taxpayers. What they did do is steal [SKAT’s] money,” Weinstein said. “So, you could bet, if the shoe was on the other foot and it was the IRS getting fleeced of your tax money, you’d want the IRS to go around the world and try to get it back from whoever stole it,” Weinstein said.

Weinstein, Oxford, Bill Maguire and Dustin Smith lead the Hughes Hubbard trial team representing SKAT, with key assistance from John McGoey, Greg Farrell, Kiran Rosenkilde, Elizabeth Zhou, Richard Bosch, Scott Sanders, Jessica Lagnado, Carolyn Harbus and Erin Pamukcu.

Read the article.