SINGAPORE: A Singapore man was fined S$63,834.90 by state courts on Thursday (May 12) for fraudulently evading the Goods and Services Tax (GST) levied on imports of various goods between April and August payable in 2019.
Foong Zhong Wen, 42, the manager of freight forwarding company Swiftfox, has pleaded guilty to 15 charges of fraudulently evading GST.
Another 29 similar charges were considered in sentencing, Singapore Customs said in a press release on Saturday.
“Foong’s fraudulent actions resulted in underpayment of GST to Singapore Customs,” the agency said.
The total GST evaded by Foong was S$15,128.26.
Singapore Customs had launched an investigation into Swiftfox for alleged under-declaration of the value of goods after discrepancies were found in some cargo handling permits.
Investigations revealed that one of Foong’s customers used his company to clear shipments from China through customs.
The customer’s Chinese freight forwarder would provide Foong with a consolidated manifest to apply for cargo handling permits. As part of the services, Swiftfox would be declared as the importer for the shipments, Singapore Customs said.
“Foong would intentionally suppress the value of the goods by changing their values on the consolidated manifest before providing it to the declaration agent to apply for cargo handling permits,” Singapore Customs said.
The declarant would pay Singapore Customs the GST based on the suppressed values reported in the consolidated manifest it received from Swiftfox and then invoice Swiftfox accordingly, Singapore Customs added.
Foong would then collect the GST payable from his customer based on the original documents and benefit from the differences.
Foong did this with 52 cargo handling permits between April and August 2019.
The 15 charges to which he pleaded guilty involved 18 cargo handling permits totaling S$7,677.95 in evaded GST.
The 29 charges considered in the sentencing related to 34 cargo handling permits involving evaded GST totaling S$7,450.31.
Anyone involved in fraudulent tax evasion or attempting to fraudulently evade a tax may be fined up to 20 times the amount of tax evaded and GST.
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