IRD wants accountant banned as liquidator

A Porirua accountant convicted for providing false tax returns will be banned from being a company liquidator for up to five years if Inland Revenue has its way.

Imran Mohammed Kamal pleaded guilty to charges for knowingly providing false tax returns and was sentenced to three months home detention in 2013.

When his bid for name suppression was rejected, Inland Revenue said Kamal was a key player in 2013’s high profile tax evasion case involving Brent Gilchrist and Scott Anderson.

Gilchrist, a former Inland Revenue official, got 10 months’ home detention while Anderson was sentenced to 3 and a half years’ jail for their part in a fictitious invoice writing scheme.

Kamal is a liquidator for a string of companies but Inland Revenue wants court orders banning him from acting as one for up to five years, a recent High Court decision says.

The tax department has issued three separate applications against Kamal, one concerning a company called Hillman, another called JDH Holdings and a third called GDZ.

In each of the cases, Inland Revenue alleges Kamal is unfit to act as a company liquidator.

It points to his convictions and also alleges he had business relationships with parties which disqualified him from accepting an appointment as liquidator.

Inland Revenue also alleges – in the case of Hillman and GDZ – that Kamal failed to call meetings of creditors after receiving a notice from the tax department requiring him to do so.

It contends that a meeting of JDH creditors (where a resolution to have Kamal replaced as a liquidator did not get the required majority) was invalid.

Kamal says that while he did not call a meeting of Hillman and GDZ creditors, the costs of doing so meant they weren’t justified.

He denied there were circumstances that disqualified him from accepting an appointment as liquidator of the three companies.

While Kamal this month sought certain discovery orders in the cases, Associate Judge Warwick Smith denied his application in a decision last week.

IRD last year said that Kamal’s company, Accountants First, received invoices from Gilchrist and Anderson for IT services that they never provided.

The company paid the invoices for these claims but the money was put into an offshore account, IRD said.

“For his part in this round robin tax scheme, Kamal kept almost 90 per cent for himself, while the others received the difference as a ‘fee’ for their involvement,” IRD’s group tax counsel Graham Tubb said at the time.

“Accountants First Limited also altered tax invoices in an attempt to hide the offending, and used the offshore bank account in a tax evasion scheme, redirecting the funds back into New Zealand through paying for work done on Mr Kamal’s house,” Tubb said.