(Bloomberg) -- A hedge fund trader was sentenced to six years in prison in Denmark in what’s the first conviction over Cum-Ex tax trades in the Nordic country in a scandal that cost the Danish treasury a total of 12.7 billion kroner ($1.9 billion).

A Danish district court found Guenther Klar guilty of swindling the state out of 320 million kroner between 2012 and 2015 through dividend tax refund applications based on fictitious stock trades run by his company, the court said in a statement.

He’s the first to receive a verdict out of nine people from the US and UK charged in relation to the Cum-Ex trading scandal by Denmark.

The court said it confiscated 175 million kroner from Klar and also barred him from residing in Denmark and from operating a business.

Read: Fallout From Europe’s Biggest Tax Scandal Is Only Getting Larger

Klar, 54, who was extradited from Belgium in June, has denied any wrongdoing. The Danish state prosecutor had sought a prison sentence of seven years.

Cum-Ex was a controversial trading strategy in which a global network of bankers, lawyers and agents exploited loopholes on dividend payouts across multiple European countries to reap duplicate tax refunds.

The trial of Sanjay Shah, who’s been named the mastermind of the scam in Denmark and charged with defrauding the country’s treasury of 9 billion kroner, is due to start on Feb. 29 after being delayed several times. The British trader was extradited from Dubai in December and will be tried alongside Anthony Patterson, allegedly Shah’s accomplice.

Read: The ‘Cum-Ex’ and ‘Cum-Cum’ Tax Dodges Haunting Banks: QuickTake

Klar, who previously worked for Shah’s Solo Capital hedge fund, was first extradited from the UK to Belgium, where he last year was sentenced to four years in prison before being sent to Denmark to face charges.

--With assistance from Christian Wienberg.

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