Tax scam mastermind faces jail
FRAUD CHARGE: Philip Felipe Eric de Figueiredo. Source: The Courier-Mail
A TAX-evasion mastermind who has been living quietly on the Gold Coast yesterday confessed to orchestrating an elaborate multi-million dollar scam involving some of the country's top entrepreneurs and celebrities.
In a coup for the Australian Taxation Office-led Operation Wickenby probe, accountant Philip Eric de Figueiredo yesterday pleaded guilty in the Queensland Supreme Court to three charges of conspiring to defraud the Commonwealth between 1999 and 2005.
The international scam involved some of Australia's most prominent celebrities, including Glenn Wheatley, Paul Hogan and John Cornell.
Hogan and "Strop" Cornell confidentially settled with the ATO. Wheatley was jailed in 2007 after admitting to tax evasion charges for failing to pay $ 318,000 in tax.
De Figueiredo, a father of two, faces 10 years in jail for each of the three counts, but avoided a term of up to 25 years when authorities dropped a money-laundering charge late last year.
The 60-year-old employee of the Swiss-based accountancy firm Strachans was extradited from Jersey, in the Channel Islands in 2010.
Operation Wickenby has collected $ 351 million since its launch in 2004, well short of the $ 1.36 billion expected to turn up, and has cost taxpayers $ 430 million.
De Figueiredo faced a "contested sentencing" before Justice Debra Mullins after pleading guilty to one count of conspiring with Wheatley to defraud the Commonwealth to cause a loss, and two similar charges relating to Gold Coast phone book salesmen, Adam Hargraves and Daniel Stoten.
They were jailed for 61/2 years after avoiding more than $ 2 million in tax, but their sentence was reduced to five years on appeal.
In that case, the court was told Strachans and de Figueiredo set up a complex offshore web of companies and trusts to inflate Hargraves' and Stoten's business expenses as early as 1999.
De Figueiredo's legal team argued he was only an employee who had not received personal gain. The Crown insisted he was instrumental in designing the scam.
De Figueiredo will be sentenced today by Justice Mullins.
Gold Coast Bulletin
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