Tax cheat Simon Anquetil sentenced to five years’ jail
Simon Anquetil will spend at least five years in prison for his role at the apex of a multi million-dollar tax cheating scheme that inflicted a “very significant financial injury” on his fellow Australians.
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An architect of one of Australia’s largest tax frauds will spend at least five years behind bars for inflicting a “collective financial injury suffered by all Australians.”
Simon Anquetil and more than a dozen others were arrested in May 2017 after $105 million was siphoned through bogus payroll companies to fund lavish homes, cars and an aircraft.
Plutus Payroll founder Anquetil netted $12 million in the tax cheating scheme but his greed has now landed him a seven-and-a-half-year maximum prison term, with a non-parole period of five years.
Justice Anthony Payne SC said the pressure put on government coffers by the coronavirus pandemic is worse than at any time since the Great Depression, and the loss of that unpaid tax has a “corrosive effect on our society.”
The judge said Anquetil was instrumental to one of the most serious white collar crimes of its kind in the country, and “operated at the apex of the hierarchy.”
“The offences were not committed out of need, but greed,” Justice Payne told the NSW Supreme Court on Friday.
Last year Anquetil pleaded guilty to conspiring to cause loss and dealing with the proceeds of crime, admitting he had personally laundered more than $28 million.
“I was motivated by a desire to always have more: More success, more respect, more wealth,” Anquetil wrote in an apology letter.
“I have lost the respect of so many, I have lost my wealth… but what’s even worse than all this, is that I have managed to cause others to lose so much in the process. My family, my friends, my community, and even my country.”
The 37-year-old Hammondville man said while spending $10,000 on staff lunches, he became completely desensitised to the value of money due to the sheer amounts passing through his bank account every day.
“When you are in the throes of the chase, it is easy to forget the victims,” he said.
“It is easy to forget that those missing tax dollars equate to, say, a budget cut impacting nurses or doctors in a public hospital.
“Particularly following the COVD-19 pandemic where government resources have become increasingly strained, and the pressure is rising on mums and dads to simply stay afloat, I feel deep regret that my actions have made it more difficult for the government to help the families who need it most.”
Anquetil said his actions have torn his own family apart, and while locked up he won’t be able to support his son or his wife during the early years of their newborn daughter’s life.
Plutus Payroll skimmed at least $105 million in pay-as-you-go tax and Goods and Services Tax through a web of second-tier companies headed by sham directors over three years, funnelling the profits offshore.
Anquetil made elaborate attempts to conceal evidence and destroy incriminating data while telling co-conspirators “I lied through my fucken teeth” to the Australian Taxation Office.
When asked what would happen when the ATO started chasing the tax debt in the second-tier companies, he said “before that happens, the boys will arrange a friendly liquidator who they pay off to liquidate the company.”
“It’s not a victimless crime, it’s a form of corruption,” Crown prosecutor Sally Dowling SC said.
“Tax evaders are thieves.”
Anquetil was charged alongside the son and daughter of ex-deputy tax commissioner Michael Cranston, who resigned from the ATO after more than 30 years service and was ultimately found not guilty of misusing his position to benefit his son Adam
Both Adam and Lauren Cranston have pleaded not guilty to their roles in the alleged scheme, but their trial has been delayed due to the coronavirus.
Anquetil will be eligible for parole in 2025, and considering his remorse and previous contributions to charities, Justice Payne was “cautiously optimistic” he will not reoffend.