Rest easy. The judge who last year said he might need to recuse himself from hearing a contempt of court case involving Sydney man Nahi Gazal this week gave the all clear.
On Monday the judge told counsel for the Deputy Commissioner of Taxation (DCoT) that he had received his tax refund.
In December the judge revealed that he had been contacted by the tax office after it discovered his refund had gone missing.
At the time the judge said the ATO had described the incident to him as one of “fraudulent diversion”.
When iNO contacted the tax office in the wake of the judge’s revelation an ATO spokesman insisted its systems were “secure, resilient and have not been compromised”.
The spokesman tried to imply that the judge had been the victim of third party fraud.
This was despite it having several years earlier launched Operation Protego, led by its Serious Financial Crimes taskforce, in response to the existence of GST fraud so widespread it was believed criminals had stolen up to $2 billion.
Imagine how much greater that sum would have been be if the ATO’s systems weren’t “secure” and “resilient”.
Sydney liquidator Stephen Hathway is being funded by the ATO to investigate a web of companies linked to Gazal and his associates, who are alleged to have fraudulently claimed more than $50 million in GST refunds for fictional expenditures on property developments that either never existed or were undertaken by others.
Since the middle of last year the judge has been preparing to hear the DCoT’s contempt case against Gazal – brought after Gazal allegedly spent millions that were the subject of freezing orders – but the missing refund had raised the possibility he might have to consider recusing himself from hearing the case.
He told the ATO’s counsel on Monday that the ATO had provided him with no information in respect of how the missing refund was recovered.
Further reading:
The position stated by the Judge was traditionally correct as was the disclosure.