Sep 15, 2010
Importer fined $526,000
By Christopher Tan, Senior Correspondent
Buyers checking out used cars. -- ST FILE PHOTO
ANOTHER car parallel importer has been dealt with for tax evasion. Lauren Sim Guan Heng, 45, was fined $526,000 or in default, 54 weeks of jail, for fraudulent evasion of duty and GST on 41 cars imported from Japan. The duty and taxes evaded amounted to $40,953.85 and $12,286.15 respectively. Sim pleaded guilty to 24 charges and the remaining 246 charges were taken into consideration.
As the sole proprietor of Crane Motor Enterprise, Sim had bought 310 Japanese cars of various makes from his suppliers in Japan between August 2006 and September 2007. With the fraudulent intent to evade duty and GST, he deliberately arranged for the commercial invoices to reflect lower values than what he had actually paid for.
Sim then used these invoices to underdeclare the value of the cars when he applied for import permits from Singapore Customs to bring the cars into Singapore. A total of 135 import permits were taken up by Sim over this period. The total duty and GST evaded was close to $420,000.
