Group ordered to pay back £1m for HMRC fiddle
A GROUP of 14 people from Merseyside and West Lancashire have been ordered to pay back over £1m for their part in a £1.2m tax fraud.
The confiscation follows the prosecution of Michael Kitchen, 47, a former administrative officer for HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC), who had diverted £1.2m in tax payments to his 13 co-defendants. All were sentenced earlier this year at Liverpool Crown Court.
Kitchen and seven others were jailed for a total of eighteen-and-a-half years, and will serve more time in prison if they do not pay up. Four others received suspended sentences but will go to jail if they do not pay within the time specified; the remaining two have already paid.
Kitchen, who must pay £175,000, was involved allocating payments made by businesses to their Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) accounts. An investigation revealed that he had diverted a proportion from 158 payments to the tax accounts of his co-defendants, who were all friends or associates.
Ian Horridge, Internal Governance, HMRC, said: “Kitchen abused his position of trust in a sophisticated and sustained fraud aimed at paying the tax liabilities of his friends and associates.
“HMRC is committed to the highest level of integrity and we take the strongest possible action against the tiny minority who let us all down by falling short of those standards.”
Kitchen was dismissed in April 2009, during an internal investigation by HMRC. His co-defendants, who owed varying amounts, were: Brian Doran, John Doran, David Doran, Francis Connolly, Anthony Doran, Robert Barlow, Robert Heyes, Raymond Hewitt, Maureen Kelly, Michael Allen, Stephanie Gough, Ian Murphy, Mark Turner.
