A former Isle of Wight hotelier is set to be extradited from Spain to Jersey to be sentenced for laundering hundreds of thousands of pounds.

As previously reported by the County Press, Martin John Hill, now of Alicante in Spain, pocketed £350,000 in VAT charges by lying about the number of bookings at his former hotels between March 2014 and April 2016.

The 56-year-old’s former hotels were the Burlington Hotel in Sandown and the Shanklin Beach Hotel.

An investigation by HM Revenue and Customers revealed Hill lied about his takings to evade tax – stashing the money into a Jersey bank account.

In 2019, for the three charges of tax evasion, Hill was handed a 30-month prison sentence by the Southwark Crown Court.

In September, Hill appeared via videolink at the Royal Court in Saint Helier and pleaded guilty to six further counts of money laundering.

Hill was due to be sentenced for the offences on Thursday, November 21, but officials in Jersey have confirmed he failed to appear in court.

Jersey Evening Post reports that:

  • Hill made three transfers in 2017, totalling £262,000, from a UK account with Tesco Bank to a Santander International account in Jersey.
  • He also possessed £340,500 in a Jersey account – money Hill had made fraudulently – and transferred the majority into a Spanish bank account.
  • Hill converted £28,487 into euros within his Jersey account during May 2017 and June 2018.

Together, this made up three counts of converting or transferring criminal property, one count of possessing the proceeds of criminal conduct, one count of removing fraudulent money and one count of converting criminal money.

The court revoked Hill’s bail and ordered his arrest, with the former hotelier set to be extradited from Spain to Jersey to be sentenced.

A representative of the Law Officers’ Department in the Jersey Government confirmed to the County Press that “steps are being taken to prepare extradition proceedings.”