Monday 21st September, 2015

A man from Northern Ireland who registered as a farmer, despite not owning a farm, created false invoices claiming he had bought machinery and completed farming work to fraudulently reclaim VAT. 

At his trial, he pleaded guilty to 23 charges of VAT fraud. In his defence, he claimed he was under pressure from loyalist paramilitaries to pay protection money.

Mike Parkinson, HMRC assistant director of criminal investigation said that he:  "...Deliberately set out to create a false paper trail so that he could claim money that he was not entitled to. He manipulated a system that exists for the benefit of legitimate companies with the sole purpose of lining his own pockets.

‘He knew he was breaking the law, yet chose to overlook it for the opportunity of making what he wrongly assumed would be easy money, at the expense of the taxpayer.’