The tax dodging snail farms of London

I've spent the last few months investigating the tax avoiding snail farms that are popping up in office blocks across central London and thought r/London might be interested in what I found.

In the process I found the mastermind behind it all… and uncovered an even stranger story in the process. You can read it all here.

Excerpt:

It is a drizzly October afternoon and I am sitting in a rural Lancashire pub drinking pints of Moretti with London’s leading snail farmer and a convicted member of the Naples mafia. We’re discussing the best way to stop a mollusc orgy.

The farmer, a 79-year-old former shoe salesman called Terry Ball who has made and lost multiple fortunes, has been cheerfully telling me in great detail for several hours about how he was inspired by former Conservative minister Michael Gove to use snails to cheat local councils out of tens of millions of pounds in taxes.

His method is simple. First, he sets up shell companies that breed snails in empty office blocks. Then he claims that the office block is legally, against all indications to the contrary, a farm, and therefore exempt from paying taxes.

“They’re sexy things,” chuckles Ball in a broad Blackburn accent, describing the speed with which two snails can incestuously multiply into dozens of specimens if they’re left alone in a box for a few weeks. Snails love group sex and cannibalism, he warns.

As the conversation drifts away from snail breeding he describes personal connections to a very prominent member of the House of Commons, his years hiding Italian mafia killers while they were on the run, and the potential market for snail salami.

There's a lot more like in the full piece (part-paywalled to pay for reporting like this — I'll personally refund you if it doesn't live up to your expectations, as I think it's pretty crazy and worth a read) but I'm happy to answer any questions on here!