{"id":328563,"date":"2026-03-14T01:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T01:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328563\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T01:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T01:05:08","slug":"kiwifruit-labour-boss-in-57m-tax-collapse-paid-himself-7-1m-salary-spent-2m-on-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/328563\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwifruit labour boss in $57m tax collapse paid himself $7.1m salary, spent $2m on gold"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saran and Gurukirpa had provided labour to the region\u2019s kiwifruit industry until an investigation by industry group Zespri identified compliance concerns<\/a> and withdrew accreditation for Singh\u2019s two companies in April 2022.<\/p>\n

Zespri said police and Immigration New Zealand were informed of the investigation\u2019s findings in the months following.<\/p>\n

Singh was bankrupted in November 2023 after action understood to relate to the non-payment of a mortgage held over his modest Tauranga home.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the Official Assignee \u2013 managing both the liquidations and the bankruptcy \u2013 said it did not know what had happened to the reported gold.<\/p>\n

The spokesperson said it was \u201creviewing the conduct of the director\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cMBIE [the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment] does not comment on the status of investigations being carried out by the [Business Registries Investigations and Compliance] team while they are underway, as ongoing inquiries may be prejudiced,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n

The revelations of Singh\u2019s multimillion-dollar salary and the company\u2019s purchase of gold bars came after he told the Herald he disputed owing money to IRD and forwarded financial statements covering 2019-2022 for the two companies as supporting evidence.<\/p>\n

The financial statements record Saran had turned over more than $41m in the 2022 financial year, claimed to be owed $4.7m in income tax refunds, and had also invested $1.8m in \u201cgold bars\u201d.<\/p>\n

That year, Gurukirpa claimed to be owed $1.4m by IRD, and a further $165,700 was recorded as a new asset listed as \u201cinvestment \u2013 gold\u201d.<\/p>\n

Based on current prices, $2m would buy around 7kg of the precious metal.<\/p>\n

Shareholder salaries for the two companies, listed as being paid to \u201cA. Singh\u201d, totalled $7.1m over 2019-2022, including $4.8m in 2022 alone.<\/p>\n

Singh did not respond to further queries from the Herald about his recorded salary from the collapsed companies or what happened to the $2m in gold bars recorded as assets.<\/p>\n

Immigration New Zealand said they were \u201caware of an Inland Revenue investigation\u201d into the matter and assessed that IRD\u2019s probe was \u201cthe most appropriate avenue to address the primary offending identified\u201d.<\/p>\n

IRD declined to provide any details about its investigation into Singh, Saran and Gurukirpa, but the first public evidence of the tax department taking action in the case came with the liquidation actions last year \u2013 nearly three years after Zespri said it had first notified authorities about its concerns.<\/p>\n

The statement of claim filed by IRD to the High Court at Tauranga in August 2025 said Saran owed $48.6m in taxes. The application noted Singh had been bankrupted nearly two years prior, effectively leaving the companies without a director.<\/p>\n

A spreadsheet attached to the claim, covering tax claimed since June 2019, showed a quarter of the total was made up of interest, and a tenth was penalties.<\/p>\n

Tax payments by Saran over the period totalled just $74,488, or 0.15% of the amount IRD claimed was now due.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for IRD said: \u201cWe cannot be specific about what happened in the case you refer to because of the secrecy rules in the Tax Administration Act.\u201d<\/p>\n

IRD did not respond to questions over whether tax secrecy provisions applied to those who did not pay tax.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor companies which choose not to pay or cannot pay, Inland Revenue uses the bankruptcy and liquidation process as a last resort to physically stop businesses from further trading,\u201d the spokesman said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy not meeting their obligations, insolvent businesses threaten the equity of the tax system by taking trade from compliant businesses working hard to do the right thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years, IRD has been grappling with a surge in unpaid and overdue taxation.<\/p>\n

In June 2025, the most recent date for which figures are available, the department reported $9.3 billion in tax was owing. This figure has more than doubled in the past four years from only $4.4b owing in June 2021.<\/p>\n

Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter and ICIJ member covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism \u2013 including twice being named Reporter of the Year \u2013 and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting for business newspapers and national magazines.<\/p>\n

Stay ahead with the latest market moves, corporate updates, and economic insights by subscribing to our Business newsletter<\/a> \u2013 your essential weekly round-up of all the business news you need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Saran and Gurukirpa had provided labour to the region\u2019s kiwifruit industry until an investigation by industry group Zespri…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310861,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[176774,116466,169288,176225,3225,6128,4282,138,17400,42503,8556,3936,1644,4241,8241,78,12620,23553,6721,685,1132,130,11692,111,139,69,90,1523,26692,10142,7493,23563,12633,5347,7496,131,1361,19985,379],"class_list":["post-328563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-176774","tag-2m","tag-57m","tag-71m","tag-according","tag-bars","tag-boss","tag-business","tag-collapse","tag-collapsed","tag-companies","tag-director","tag-financial","tag-gold","tag-himself","tag-in","tag-inland","tag-kiwifruit","tag-labour","tag-last","tag-million","tag-more","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-over","tag-owing","tag-paid","tag-revenue","tag-salary","tag-spent","tag-statements","tag-tax","tag-than","tag-that","tag-worth","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328563\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}