THE FAMILY of Dublin food importer Paul Begley, who was jailed for six years for evading tax on Chinese garlic, has expressed its devastation and shock at the severity of the sentence imposed on him.
In a statement, the family said he had “put up his hands five years ago”, co-operated fully with the investigation and that the firm, Begley Brothers, had agreed to repayment terms for the entire amount outstanding, including all the penalties.
He had also resigned as a director from the company and “was prepared to pay whatever was imposed as an additional fine.
“But instead we have this prison sentence. It’s shocking and it’s going to end up costing the taxpayer thousands instead of Paul paying the taxpayer thousands. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The 46-year-old was jailed on Friday in a conviction imposed by the Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for what it called a “grave” and “huge” tax evasion scheme in failing to pay €1.6 million duty on more than 1,000 tonnes of garlic from China.
Chinese garlic carries a tax, imposed by the EU to protect member states’ production, of 232 per cent, compared to just over 9 per cent on all other fruit and vegetables.
In the statement, issued on Saturday, the Begley family said it was “devastated and heartbroken. Our employees are stunned and of course Paul is still in shock. We all are.
“We have been inundated with messages of support, from employees, from friends and from customers here in Ireland and from as far away as New Zealand and South Africa and we are determined to see this through.”
The statement added: “It’s important to stress that what Paul did was wrong. It was a breach of EU regulations and he knows that. His family also knows that.
“What we can’t understand is how he received such an extraordinary sentence when every day you see people guilty of violence, drug smuggling and other shocking crimes getting much less.”
A ruling last month by the Court of Criminal Appeal in the case of a man jailed for 12 years for social welfare fraud, gave future sentencing guidelines that “significant and systematic frauds directed upon the public revenue . . . should generally meet with an immediate and appreciable custodial sentence”.
Barrister Paul Anthony McDermott described the four-page judgment of the DPP v Paul Murray as “landmark” and said it used “the kind of language not usually associated with the Court of Criminal Appeal”.
The judgment described the appellant, who claimed dole payments at a number of offices around the State, as a passport holder, saying that as such he owed “a fidelity to the nation and loyalty to the State”. The judgment said crimes involving the loss of public money were not “victimless crimes”.
It referred to the collapse of US investment firm Lehman Brothers in 2008 and its impact on the “contraction in our economy which is unparalleled in living memory”.
This all “calls for a high level of social solidarity.”
