SINGAPORE - A manager of a car import company has been jailed four weeks and fined $594,399.60 for fraudulently under-declaring the value of 47 imported cars.
Ang Wee Tat Vida, 35, pleaded guilty to 28 charges of incorrect declarations of the value of imported cars under the Customs Act. Another 52 similar charges were taken into consideration in the sentencing.
Ang also pleaded guilty to 15 charges under the Road Traffic Act for providing incorrect information on the Open Market Value (OMV) of the imported cars, which affected the amount of Additional Registration Fees (ARF) payable for these cars. Another 32 charges were taken into consideration in the sentencing.
Ang was ordered by the court to pay the ARF shortfall for the 47 imported cars to the Land Transport Authority (LTA).
In a statement on Thursday (June 2), Singapore Customs and LTA said they began investigating Ang's company, Dream Auto Pte Ltd, in July 2013.
It was revealed that Ang had asked his suppliers from Japan, the United Kingdom and Hong Kong to split the value of each vehicle into two invoices, of which only one was submitted to Singapore Customs for the assessment of duty and Goods and Services Tax (GST) payable.
In some cases, he asked the exporters to create fictitious invoices with lower values of the imported vehicles and submitted them to Singapore Customs, the statement added.
Between January 2012 and June 2013, Ang sent incomplete or fictitious invoices for 47 imported cars to Singapore Customs.
The total duty, GST and ARF which he evaded amounted to more than $74,000, $31,000, and $370,000 respectively.
The statement said that anyone found guilty of fraudulently evading duty and GST on imported goods can be fined up to 20 times the amount of tax evaded and/or be jailed up to two years.
Providing incorrect information affecting the amount of tax chargeable on the registration of a vehicle in Singapore is also a serious offence under the Road Traffic Act. Anyone found guilty can be fined up to $10,000 or jailed up to six months. He will also have to pay up the undercharged tax amount.
