A Tauranga man has been jailed after admitting tax frauds totalling $5 million.
Ahmad Bakhtiar was sentenced to two years and 10 months in jail when he appeared for sentence in Tauranga District Court today on 64 charges of tax evasion and 22 charges of using a document.
The court was told Bakhtiar was behind a scheme that involved forming a new company and, for a fee, supplying invoices in that company's name for agricultural work completed by someone else.
He wrote false invoices, and recruited men from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh to incorporate the new companies, and who typically left New Zealand before Inland Revenue was able to complete any investigation into their affairs.
It was estimated that $5,185,441 in GST, PAYE and income tax was evaded by the 14 companies he was involved in.
IRD manager of assurance investigations Richard Philp said 33 people, including Bakhtiar, had been convicted of fraud in the agricultural industry in the past five years.
The total cost of the offending involved was more than $31 million, Mr Philp said.
"We will be continuing to monitor the industry very closely and will be taking firm action against these sorts of scams," he said.
"Our message to anyone trying to commit this type of fraud is that we will catch up with them, and that they can expect both the courts and Inland Revenue to treat their actions very seriously."
