The British businessman Sanjay Shah has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for fraud against the Danish state – the longest sentence for a financial crime in the country’s history.

Glostrup court on Thursday found Shah guilty of gross fraud, ruling that he played a “central and controlling role” in a major tax fraud of more than 9bn DKK (£996m) involving dividend tax refunds.

The case started in August 2015 when Danish tax authorities discovered that billions had been illegally claimed from the treasury.

In addition to the 12-year prison sentence, which is three years longer than the previous Danish record for financial crime, Shah will also be expelled from the country and banned from running a business.

He will also have 7.2bn DKK seized – the figure that the prosecution was able to prove he had gained from the fraud. So far, Danish police have seized about 3bn DKK.

Shah, 54, denied committing a criminal offence, claiming he was merely exploiting a loophole in Danish tax rules. But the court dismissed his defence, saying he was not entitled to the amount he claimed.

The court said the length of sentence was intended to reflect the extent and the seriousness of the crime, which it said took place between 2012 and 2015.

The verdict stated that “the 54-year-old’s central and controlling role in the crime, which was carefully planned and systematically organised and further streamlined along the way by developing a software system, meant that the crime escalated dramatically”.

Shah immediately appealed against the verdict. He will remain in custody until the appeal verdict is reached in the high court, as the court believes he is a flight risk.

Until he was extradited in December 2023, after a lengthy extradition process, the British financier had been living in Dubai.

In March, his associate Anthony Mark Patterson, also British, confessed to involvement in a 8.4m DKK dividend tax fraud, for which he was sentenced to eight years in prison. Guenther Klar, another associate, was sentenced to six years in prison in February after being charged with defrauding the treasury of 320m DKK.