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The Supreme Court of NSW has sentenced a chartered accountant to 11 years in jail for his part in a $450 million tax fraud.
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Chartered accountant sentenced to jail
24 March 2015
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Anthony James Dickson was sentenced last week to a minimum seven years' jail on two fraud charges.
According to a Supreme Court judgement summary, the first was an offence of conspiring to dishonestly cause a loss, or a risk of loss, to the Commonwealth of Australia, while the second offence was conspiring to deal with property of a value of $1 million or more, believing it to be the proceeds of crime.
In relation to the first offence, Mr Dickson and his co-conspirator agreed to cause Neumedix Health Australasia Pty Ltd to make false depreciation claims in its tax returns of hundreds of millions of dollars. Mr Dickson and his co-conspirator were directors of NHA.
The depreciation claims concerned the cost of acquisition by NHA of certain medical technologies under sham agreements with a Cayman Islands company, Athena Health Patents Incorporate, which Mr Dickson controlled.
According to the judgement summary, Mr Dickson and his co-conspirator agreed to make false depreciation claims to enable NHA to avoid incurring tax liabilities on income it was deemed to have received as the owner of units in a number of trusts. These trusts generated very large taxable profits from their participation in certain financing transactions that were arranged between the offender, the ANZ Banking Group Ltd and some of its clients.
The scheme cost the government $135 million in lost tax.
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In sentencing Mr Dickson, Justice Robert Beech-Jones found that the entirety of the depreciation claims made by NHA in the financial years 2007 to 2010 was false since the acquisition agreements on which they were based were shams. Although NHA had declared almost $380 million in income from the trusts in that period it had claimed depreciation deductions of approximately $400 million.
Given the amounts involved, the sophisticated nature of the scheme, the length of time over which it was implemented, the methods employed and Mr Dickson’s role, the judge considered the offence fell into the worst category of offences under s.135.4(5).
In relation to the second offence (under s 11.5(1)), Justice Beech-Jones said Mr Dickson and his co-conspirator agreed to deal with the “proceeds of crime” being the amounts standing in various bank accounts that represented the cash distributions from the trusts to NHA by causing the funds to be distributed offshore to various accounts controlled by entities associated with the offender and then repatriated to Australia, largely for their own benefit.
Justice Beech-Jones found that Mr Dickson dealt with the proceeds of crime via the use of accounts in overseas jurisdictions owned by companies that he secretly controlled, used codes and false identities and that he disguised the nature of some of the distributions to himself and his co-conspirator as loans or investments. He found this was a very serious example of an offence under s.11.5(1).
For the offence under s.135.4(5) of the Code, Mr Dickson was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of seven years and six months, commencing 22 December 2014 and expiring on 22 June 2022. For the offence under s.11.5(1) of the Code, Mr Dickson was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of nine years, commencing 22 December 2016 and expiring on 22 December 2025.
Mr Dickson will be eligible for release on that day.
According to a biography on the Neumedix website, Mr Dickson was a principal at top four firm EY from 2000 to 2004.
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