THE secretary of one of Scotland’s most prestigious golf clubs has been slated by a judge for giving “extraordinary” evidence in an £800,000 tax case.

Steven Anthony, who runs Royal Troon, which hosted last year’s Open, has been criticised for what appears to be muddled testimony on behalf of his old club, Gullane, in East Lothian.

Mr Anthony’s evidence was described as causing “difficulty” by tax judge Anna Scott in a judgment published last week. He was appearing on behalf of Gullane, which had previously claimed it had overpaid hundreds of thousands of pounds in VAT in the 1990s and early 2000s. That claim was turned down by HMRC in 2009. The club was seeking leave to appeal against the decision despite missing a time bar to do so.

Judge Scott rejected this application. She said: “He argued that he had prepared and submitted the claim (and the later claims) because he was familiar with that aspect of VAT law. Whilst that may have been the case, it became apparent that he was less conversant with the detailed rules of procedure. That is evidenced by the facts that, for example, at least one claim was out of time.”

Mr Anthony told the court he had sent a “simple” letter to HMRC to review their decision, for a sum, which was valued at £780,000.

Judge Scott said: “He said that he had written a simple letter enclosing the decision letter and sent it. We asked if he had a ‘brought forward’ system in order to enable him to check whether a response would be received timeously. He said not. We found that quite remarkable for a claim which was valued in excess of three quarters of a million pounds.”

The judge found Mr Anthony had not seen any distinction between HMRC and her tribunal. She found he had not sent any letter and did not allow leave to appeal.

Mr Anthony did not respond to a request to make a comment.