A total of 27 members of a gang that created a false audit trail to enable clients to operate in the construction industry without paying tax or VAT have been sentenced.
The group created 16 bogus companies and used 56 associated bank accounts to commit the £5m tax fraud.
The two ringleaders, 58-year-old Francis Devlin and 56-year-old Paul McStravick, received prison sentences of four years each.
Another 25 accomplices, most of whom knowingly allowed their personal details to be used as part of the fraud, were handed suspended prison sentences.
In a decade-long investigation, more than 400 HMRC officers worked in collaboration with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Public Prosecution Service, the National Crime Agency and financial institutions.
‘Aladdin’s cave’ for investigators
The case was based on more than 260 hours of secretly recorded footage of the gang members plotting the fraud from the Belfast accountancy firm Allen Tully & Co. Devlin was a partner at the firm and the wider gang used it as a base.
In one clip they describe the office as an “Aladdin’s cave” for fraud investigators, while suggesting they would “go down in history” if they were ever caught.
HMRC kept the gang under secret surveillance for six weeks between February and March 2012.
It is the first time this approach has been used by HMRC in Northern Ireland and is reserved for the most serious of tax fraud cases. It requires approval from the government’s surveillance camera commissioner.
HMRC’s director of the Fraud Investigation Service, Richard Las, said: “This was a sophisticated and complex fraud that took the largest-ever tax probe in Northern Ireland, including extensive covert surveillance, for HMRC fraud investigators to bring it down.
“Their tenacity and expertise has stopped the loss of millions of pounds in taxpayers’ money, which is now paying for our vital public services, rather than lining the pockets of criminals.
“The fact is, no tax criminal is beyond our reach and that includes those corrupt professionals who aid and abet them, as these sentences clearly show.
“We encourage anyone with information about any type of tax fraud to report it to HMRC online.”
