Teen Boon fronts court over $3.4m kickbacks to foreign agents
A discredited former company director falsified accounting records so that foreign agents could pocket $3.4m in kickbacks from the sale of a student accommodation block in Caulfield East.
South East
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A disgraced former Melbourne company director has been spared jail despite facilitating the payment of more than $3m in kickbacks to overseas businessmen for the sale of a student accommodation block.
Boon Teen, 72, of Vermont South, was sentenced at the County Court on Tuesday after he previously pleaded guilty to a charge of false accounting from the sale of a Caulfield East student accommodation block in 2013.
Teen was involved in the sale of the building, that was part-owned by his business Wanissa Properties, to an investment company owned by the Malaysian government in 2013.
He and his business partners were responsible for converting the block of land from residential houses into a multi-level student apartment complex between 2009 and 2013 in what became known as the Dudley International House.
The Malaysian government appointed agents to negotiate the sale with Teen and a price of $17.8m was agreed upon in October 2012.
But delays in finalising the sale concerned Teen due to financial difficulties he and his business partners were facing.
In early 2012, the agents proposed the agreed sale price be increased from $17.8m to $22.6m and the difference be paid to them.
Teen agreed to the proposal but became concerned as to how to document his promised payment of $4.7m to the agents for accounting and tax purposes.
He suggested that they send a false invoice to Wanissa Properties for purported services such as consultancy, advisory, marketing and advertising fees.
The arrangement would then permit his company to claim the payment as a tax-deductible business expense.
In the end $3.4m was paid to the agents and the building was sold to the Malaysian government.
Judge Michael O’Connell said while the amount involved in the kickback was high, factors such as Teen’s guilty plea, diagnosis of kidney cancer, glowing references, and his wife and grandchildrens’ reliance on him mitigated his offending.
“The essence of your offending was to provide false accounting to cover up a kickback engineered by Malaysian officials,” the judge said.
He was sentenced to a wholly suspended term of 21 months’ imprisonment.
