A kidney specialist who made headlines in 2008 for a ground-breaking transplant operation has been charged in court with tax offences.

Lye Wai Choong, 60, is accused of filing incorrect tax returns, including three counts of understating the income of the Centre for Kidney Diseases, where he is a director.

According to court papers seen by The Straits Times, his actions allegedly resulted in around $1.44 million in undercharged taxes.

The Centre for Kidney diseases is a private clinic in Orchard Road, offering specialised medical services.

Lye is also a renal physician at Mount Elizabeth Hospital.

In 2008, he and four other doctors successfully performed a high-risk operation transplanting a kidney into a patient of a different blood type from the donor.

Formerly the president of the Society of Transplantation in Singapore, Lye was charged on July 5 with making incorrect returns without an excuse by understating the centre's income in 2013, 2014 and 2015.

The centre took in more than $2 million in 2013 and in 2015, and more than $1.9 million in 2014.

This resulted in a total of about $1.02 million in undercharged taxes.

The doctor also faces 12 charges of making incorrect goods and services tax returns without a reasonable excuse from 2011 to 2014 on behalf of the centre as its director, resulting in almost $420,000 in undercharged taxes.

If found guilty, he may have to pay double the amount of undercharged tax, and may also be fined up to $5,000, jailed for up to three years, or both.

In a separate case, the director of IT company Orynix, Arthur Yeo, was charged on May 24 with tax offences committed in 2012, which resulted in more than $77,000 in undercharged taxes.

If found guilty, he will have to pay thrice the amount of the undercharged tax, and may be fined up to $10,000, jailed for up to seven years, or both.