THE DIRECTOR of an accountancy firm used his “intimate knowledge” of the tax system to masterminded a construction industry scheme that conned the public purse out of nearly £370,000.
Malcolm Maclean inflated expense claims and material costs for subcontractors to hide his client’s true earnings in a plan hatched around his dining room table.
In a bid to hide the scam from his clients and keep the cash for himself, the 49-year-old former Inland Revenue worker fiddled the self-assessment forms to conceal his scam.
Along with his colleagues, Aidan Tait and David Fisher, Maclean, of Castle Hill, Wylam, Northumberland, operated a fraud that was so intricate it was impossible for HM Revenue & Customs officers to fully follow their paper trail and decipher the extent of the crime.
In total, the firm received more than £2m in a two-year period and should have kept just 2.25% in commission. Instead, it kept £368,000 by conning the authorities.
Now a judge at Newcastle Crown Court has sentenced Maclean – who has been an alcoholic since his teens after playing in a rock band – to three years in prison and criticised his “professionally planned” fraud.
Recorder Charles Ekins said: “This was a meticulously planned and sophisticated fraud. It’s plain to me that, because of your particular unique position, you must have been a leading creator of the fraud.
“That’s not to say that others were not equally responsible but, at the end of the day, you were the one who for many years worked for the Inland Revenue, and you were the one who had intimate knowledge of the construction industry scheme.
“As you admitted to police, you had reached a senior level with the Inland Revenue with particular responsibility for that scheme.”
Maclean’s accountancy firm, Maclean Fisher Tate Accounting and Taxation, based in Shildon, County Durham, began operating the fraud in 2008 when it enlisted its clients onto a construction industry scheme.
The project, operating under a company named Work Force and designed to help companies pay their tax “up-front”, should have taken 2.25% commission from
But they hiked up the expenses and building costs to try to reduce the company’s net profit and the tax liability owed by their 204 subcontractors.
When the scam began to unravel, 49-year-old Maclean had offered to become a prosecution witness after admitting his role in the scam, but Tate and Fisher changed their pleas midway through a trial at Newcastle Crown Court.
Tait, 30, of Griffiths Court, Bowburn, and Fisher, 28, of Hallgarth Street, Sherburn, both County Durham, previously pleaded guilty to false accounting and were handed six-month prison sentences, suspended for two years.
Maclean’s estranged wife, Pauline Maclean, 49, of Burnie Gardens, Shildon, faced the same charges as her husband, but her not guilty pleas were accepted by the prosecution.
Maclean entered guilty pleas to one count of conspiring to cheat the public revenue and one count of concealing criminal property.
Paul Cross, mitigating, said Maclean had left the company prior to the scam being uncovered and had not participated through to the end.
He said: “He is a man with a poor health record mostly associated with his alcoholism.
“He’s been an alcoholic since he was 17 when he was in a rock band who drank excessively, and Mr Maclean couldn’t cope.”
Tax chief's warning
TAX chiefs last night said that cheats who con the public purse would feel the full force of the law. Referring to Malcolm Maclean and his fraud, Paul Rooney, assistant director for criminal investigation at the HMRC, said: "This group are professionally-trained accounting specialists who used their knowledge not only to defraud taxpayers but to rip off their own clients, assuming their knowledge would mean they could get away with it. That three professionals should conspire to abuse their clients’ trust in this way to line their own pockets makes this even more shocking. As accountants, they were well aware of the rules and were naive to think that they could simply bend them for their own illegal profit."
