The former owners of a famous Fife hotel accused of tax fraud amounting to more than £740,000 will have to wait until next month to learn if they will face trial by jury.
Andrew Dykes,62, and his wife Lesley,65, who run the popular Crusoe Hotel in Lower Largo and formally the Dunnikier House Hotel in Kirkcaldy, have been accused of knowingly being concerned in fraudulently evading the payment of VAT between August 2011 and July 2016.
The Leven couple are said to have submitted returns to HM Revenue and Customs with false information and failed to submit required VAT returns.
The charges follow a raid by Customs and Excise officials in August, 2016.
At a procedural hearing at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court both denied the charge.
Sheriff James Williamson decided to continue the case to a further pre-trial hearing scheduled for September 3, with a date for the couple’s trial due to be set them.
The pair’s bail was also continued until that date.
Previously, the court heard their trial could last around 10 days because of what depute fiscal Nicola Henderson referred to as a “vast amount of paperwork”.
The 16-room Crusoe Hotel is a popular destination for tourists visiting Fife’s east neuk with the hotel, which is set along the picturesque harbour front at Lower Largo and is famous for its links with Alexander Selkirk.
Selkirk is said to have influenced the story of Robins Crusoe after being shipwrecked on a deserted island in the South Pacific ocean for four years in the 1700s.
