Singapore Man Sentenced to Prison and $4.4M Fine for Evading Taxes on Imports
The Singapore State Court sentenced Ho Shyan Tien, a Singaporean national, to eight months in prison and levied a $4.4 million (in Singapore dollars) fine for evading the Goods and Services Tax on imports of various goods between 2015 and 2019, Singapore Customs announced June 24. Ho, the only director of freight forwarding company Sea-Net Cargo Express, pleaded guilty to six charges of evading GST on the imports.
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The Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore discovered the scheme through a check on one of Ho's customers' GST return submission, revealing discrepancies in the Cargo Clearance Permits. Singapore Customs then verified that the GST amounts in the importer's copy of the permits were higher than the numbers in Singapore Customs' records. Later investigations found Ho hid the original values of the goods in the commercial invoices by putting fraudulent values over them, copying the false invoices and giving them to a declaring agent to apply for a permit, Singapore Customs said.
Ho also changed the values and GST amounts listed in the approved permits, then gave the permits to his customers. Ho carried out this scheme 632 times from 2015 to 2019, evading over $1.25 million in taxes.