Fraudster jailed for tax fiddle

A Western Bay contractor who left taxpayers more than $650,000 out of pocket has been jailed for the horticultural industry's biggest tax fraud.
Te Puke 29-year-old, Balwinder Singh, was sent to prison this week for three years and two months following an Inland Revenue Department investigation.
Judge Peter Rollo sentenced the contracting company director, who has been an Indian overstayer since 2003, after he earlier pleaded guilty to 14 charges of filing false tax returns and 13 charges of document and identity fraud.
The IRD said the prosecution was the largest and most successful within the horticultural industry and comes nearly three years after the lid was lifted on an extensive scam involving immigrant workers in the Western Bay.
In May 2002 the IRD received an application from Singh for an IRD number for his horticultural company known as Star Agricultural Contractors.
While GST and PAYE returns were filed by the company, IRD soon became suspicious when the GST returns indicated high subcontractor expenses _ and an audit was carried out.
Checks with orchardists revealed Star Agricultural Contractors hadn't carried out work it said it had and directors of companies Singh said had employed him could not be found.
Further inquiries established Singh had used forged and false driver licences to assume four new identities. Using these identities, Singh formed two more companies and set about arranging a scam with horticultural contractors to avoid paying GST and PAYE.
Singh was arrested on July 29 last year and IRD estimated a total of $654,427 in payments had been evaded by Singh and/or other contractors as a result of his actions. Just over $42,000 of that was recovered from cash, cheques and bank accounts Singh was operating at the time of his arrest.
During sentencing Crown prosecutor Rob Ronayne acknowledged the scheme was well-known in the agricultural and horticultural industries. "This is an example of a long period of sophisticated offending, we are talking about $654,000."
While Singh was not the only person caught up in the scam, Mr Ronayne said it was necessary he accepted his wrongdoing.
"An acknowledgment of offending is important in sentencing," he said, noting the defendant was entitled to credit if Judge Rollo believed he was genuinely apologetic.
Defence lawyer Viv Winiata argued this was the case. "He understands and acknowledges what he did was wrong."
But his client was not the first to get tied up in the scheme.
"This is a very familiar scheme to the courts and in recent years locally. There seems to be a geographical tie in connection with the local kiwifruit industry largely because of the demand for labour in the industry."
This was coupled with the fact the community has "illegal overstayers who are utilised as part of the labour force working in the industry".
Rather then being an architect of the clever tax scam, his client was simply an innocent pawn, he said.
"His offending is shortly described as an invoice writer."
He said there was no way Singh received the "full benefit" of the $654,000 that IRD's audit uncovered.
"He does not clearly have a real substantive grasp on the working of our tax system ... he received guidance from another."
Judge Rollo agreed saying there was no way Singh was the only person involved in the scam.
"There is no suggestion you, yourself profited from the scam. You played a lesser role in principle ... but you contributed significantly," he said.
Because of this and the need to provide deterrents to others in the community, Judge Rollo said a prison sentence of three years and two months was inevitable.