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A former Australian Taxation Office employee has been sentenced to five months in prison after fraudulently claiming up to $60,000 in COVID-19 test isolation payments and income tax refunds, following an investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Between October 2020 and April 2022, Kasey Harries used her position at the ATO to access sensitive information belonging to four taxpayers, which she then used to create false accounts impersonating real people to claim the payments from both the Victorian and federal governments.
The sentencing is the third time the NACC has uncovered corruption in the ATO. Credit: Louie Douvis
Harries pleaded guilty to 10 charges, including obtaining financial advantage by deception and aiding and abetting another person to attempt to commit an offence. She has been granted bail pending an appeal against the sentence. Her appeal will take place in February next year in the County Court of Victoria.
COVID-19 isolation payments were made to people who were staying home and unable to attend their workplaces, in a bid to reduce the spread of the virus by those unable to work remotely.
The case was originally investigated by the former Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and the ATO, but was handed over to the NACC upon its establishment in July 2023. This is the 11th successful conviction from a NACC investigation since its founding, and the third relating to employees of the ATO.
In March 2024, Wenfeng Wei, a former ATO employee, was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison after accepting a $100,000 bribe, handed over in a white plastic bag. The bribe came from a person they were auditing, Raymond Shlemon, in exchange for reducing millions of dollars in personal and business tax debts and disclosing restricted information on over 1000 occasions. Wei’s sentence is currently under appeal.
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Shlemon – who was being audited alongside his business Global World Group – was sentenced to just over 3 years in prison for paying the bribe, and John Zeitoune was sentenced to 2 years and 10 months in prison for aiding and abetting the payment.
Another investigation handed from the law enforcement integrity commission to the NACC found an ATO employee had “extensively accessed various taxation records” between August 2020 and April 2021. The employee was fined $2000 and given an 18-month good behaviour bond.
The establishment of the NACC was a core election promise for Labor at the 2022 election, but its final form was criticised for not being robust enough. Particular criticism focused on the fact that public hearings would only be held in exceptional circumstances.
In its first year of operation, the commission received 3126 referrals, conducted 24 corruption investigations and oversaw or monitored 21 investigations by other agencies.
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