Yevgeni Bezhenar (also known as James) and Alexander Bezhenar of Halifax Business Consulting Pty Ltd (Halifax) in Melbourne were convicted on all counts after pleading guilty to several charges. They admitted they commissioned the creation of false Commonwealth documents, including business activity statements (BAS) and notices of assessment (NOA) to obtain bank loans for their business and a number of clients.
The Australian Taxation Office uncovered the scheme after auditing another matter and launching a subsequent investigation that saw search warrants executed at Halifax’s office and an employee’s home.
It found evidence that the Bezhenar brothers had paid employees and others to create false BAS and NOAs that inflated sales or earnings, which would then be passed off as genuine to banks and other lenders.
In several cases, they had commissioned the firm’s graphic designer, Eugene Vinarsky, to alter documents at their request.
The Bezhenar brothers would make handwritten amendments to the documents – sometimes doubling their clients’ actual earnings – before sending them on to Mr Vinarsky to digitally manipulate.
Mr Vinarsky went to great lengths to make the documents look legitimate. In one email, he reminded his boss, Yevgeni Bezhenar, to only provide one of the doctored documents by facsimile or hard copy, to avoid someone noticing he had edited the original document’s security stamp.
Mr Vinarsky was convicted for the part he played in the offending. He was sentenced to a 12-month Community Correction Order requiring him to complete 200 hours of unpaid community work.
Yevgeni Bezhenar was convicted and sentenced to 10 months imprisonment while his brother, Alexander, was convicted and sentenced to 6 months imprisonment. Both were released immediately on a $1,000 recognisance release order requiring them to be of good behaviour for 18-months.
