Man, 39, fined S$5.6 million for tax evasion on 464 imported motor vehicles

SINGAPORE — A man has been fined more than S$5.6 million for evading duties and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) on imported motor vehicles, the Singapore Customs and Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a joint statement on Thursday (March 10).

Lin Junjiang, 39, had suppressed the declared values of 464 motor vehicles imported into Singapore between June and November 2016.

The Singaporean was sentenced on Wednesday to a total fine of S$5,628,864 after he pleaded guilty to one amalgamated charge under the Customs Act and another amalgamated charge under the Road Traffic Act. 

As he could not pay the fine, he would serve 40 months’ imprisonment in default.

Lin was also sentenced to four weeks imprisonment for underpaying the additional registration fee during the registration of some of the vehicles.

On Thursday, both authorities said they had launched an investigation into Lin, the sole owner of J21 Imports, after they detected that the motor vehicle importer had omitted to declare the value of optional features of the vehicles for assessing the duty and GST payable for the vehicles.

The probe later revealed that J21 Imports would prepare two invoices for each imported motor vehicle transaction.

The first invoice stated the partial value of the motor vehicle, while the other invoice would indicate the vehicle’s balance value and falsely describing it as a “liaison fee”.

Lin would then only declare the partial value in the first invoice, intentionally omitting the liaison fee, leading to a short payment of duty and GST amounting to about S$703,600 and S$295,510 respectively, said Singapore Customs and LTA.

The values of 67 motor vehicles that were under-declared to Singapore Customs had also resulted in the additional registration fee shortfall of S$567,594 for LTA.

Those found guilty of fraudulent evasion or attempted evasion of any customs duty or excise duty can be fined up to 20 times the amount of duty and GST evaded, said both agencies.

Members of public with information on smuggling activities or evasion of duty or GST can contact the Singapore Customs hotline on 1800-2330000 or email customs_intelligence [at] customs.gov.sg.