Warrington family jailed over £750,000 tax fraud
THREE members of a Warrington family have been jailed after being convicted of defrauding the public purse of more than three-quarters of a million pounds.
Amarjit Singh Sidhu, along with his wife Balwant Kaur Sidhu and cousin Surjit Singh Dhindsa were jailed for a total of seven and a half years after stealing £771,000 in income tax, National Insurance and VAT owed to HMRC.
A fourth family member, Rajinder Singh Bhattle, received a suspended prison sentence.
The fraudsters failed to pass on to HMRC the tax and national insurance contributions deducted from staff salaries. They set-up a sham company (Tempaid) to avoid paying the taxes and to suppress the VAT liability of their legitimate company, Multiple Construction.
Mr Sidhu was the director of Slough-based Multiple Construction. The company supplied labour to a number of construction companies based in London, whose contracts involved the construction of Wembley Stadium, Canary Wharf and White City. His wife was the company secretary. In April 2004, Multiple Construction transferred all its employees to another company, Tempaid, run by Mr Bhattle and Mr Dhindsa.
The court heard that the fraudsters created Tempaid in an attempt to evade tax and reduce the VAT liability of Multiple Construction. The workforce was never transferred from Multiple Construction. Tempaid was in effect used as a hidden bank account to under-declare the profits of Multiple Construction.
The money that Multiple Construction retained in its bank accounts was used to fund the extravagant lifestyle of Mr and Mrs Sidhu. This included assisting in the purchase of ‘Millstones’, the family home, which cost over £1,000,000, along with other properties, which were let to tenants.
Following his arrest in 2006 Mr Sidhu immediately re-mortgaged some of his properties, removing equity of £800,000, which he transferred to India. Confiscation of assets is being sought.
