{"id":39955,"date":"2025-09-24T02:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T02:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/39955\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T02:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T02:59:08","slug":"pukekohe-woman-haitelenisia-kaumavae-sentenced-to-home-detention-for-1-5m-tax-evasion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/39955\/","title":{"rendered":"Pukekohe woman Haitelenisia Kaumavae sentenced to home detention for $1.5m tax evasion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Her offending was described in court as repetitive and pre-meditated. <\/p>\n

Inland Revenue told the court that this case was a wilful example of repeated fraud and deprived the public of a substantial sum of money.<\/p>\n

A review of the bank accounts showed invoices were issued by the company to growers which charged for the labour of others and included a deduction of 15% withholding tax and were inclusive of GST. <\/p>\n

The judge said that Kaumavae didn\u2019t gain any personal profit from this due to her cultural obligations, but did acknowledge that it was serious offending. <\/p>\n

She was sentenced to nine months\u2019 home detention with six months\u2019 post-detention conditions and reparation of $6500.<\/p>\n

Earlier, a Southland woman whose company provided school lunches was sentenced to nearly a year\u2019s home detention after evading taxes for three years.<\/p>\n

Debra Lee Monteith was the sole director of Lee 19 Limited, a company that provided school lunches. <\/p>\n

It was found that over $800,000 was unaccounted for between March 2021 and February 2024 and that Monteith benefited by just over $300,000 between these years. <\/p>\n

She was sentenced to 11 months\u2019 home detention in the Invercargill District Court in June. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Her offending was described in court as repetitive and pre-meditated. Inland Revenue told the court that this case…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39956,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[23968,36265,1558,20556,34380,36266,2082,23361,36263,1345,36264,440,1132,11692,111,43,139,69,36268,36262,5161,36267,7496,61,102,1354],"class_list":["post-39955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-23968","tag-15m","tag-been","tag-detention","tag-evading","tag-evasion","tag-for","tag-growers","tag-haitelenisia","tag-home","tag-kaumavae","tag-local","tag-million","tag-nearly","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pickers","tag-pukekohe","tag-sentenced","tag-supplied","tag-tax","tag-to","tag-with","tag-woman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39955","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=39955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39955\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}