Man jailed for part in tax evasion scheme

The Government says the money it paid out to consultants doing work on the IT upgrade is money well spent.

A Wellington businessman has been sentenced to three years and six months in prison for his part in an aggressive tax evasion scheme.

Paul William O'Connor, 64, was sentenced by Justice Simon France in the High Court at Wellington today.

He was found guilty in July of 14 tax evasion charges relating to the case involving Scott Anderson, who was jailed for his role in the scheme last month.

Anderson, who was also involved in another tax evasion scheme along with co-accused Brent Gilchrist, was also sentenced to three years and six months in prison.

Inland Revenue group assurance manager Patrick Goggin said the O'Connor case involved calculated and deliberate attempts to get substantial sums of taxpayer money based on false transactions.

"This was naked fraud and a sustained course of evasion activity by a successful businessman," he said.

"The sentence shows that courts view this sort of offending seriously and the prosecution taken against O'Connor shows that Inland Revenue will hold people to account if they break the law."

Mr Goggin said O'Connor willingly allowed his companies to be used to create fictitious expenses that were offset against their income streams.

"This activity included filing false tax returns, hiding assets, and the late filing of returns to allow his business to be repeatedly restructured to conceal the proceeds of fraud.

"The transactions were motivated by greed and were structured so that a very profitable business could pay little or no tax thereby cheating other taxpayers."

Inland Revenue is still working to recover the outstanding money.

"Our customers can be confident that Inland Revenue will detect those evading their obligations and those cheating on their taxes should be aware that we will take action when we detect deliberate non-compliance."