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Jail for haulier who paid for holidays with false invoices
Page 8
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Stealing from the Inland Revenue is never a good idea ripping off the taxman for £130,000 is a shortcut to jail. Mike Jewell reports.
A MANCHESTER-based haulier has been jailed for 16 months after cheating the Inland Revenue out of over i130,000.
Stephen Kennedy, MD of Trafford Park firm Straight Freight, pleaded guilty to 20 offences involving false invoices and false accounting.
Manchester Crown Court heard that over a four-year period Kennedy had prepared and introduced false invoices valued at E292,000, and had filtered another £50,000 through the company's books for his own use.
In 1999 one of the company's major customers, Key Logistics, went bankrupt owing Straight Freight £243,000 which could not be recovered. Kennedy came up with the idea of taking drastic action to alleviate his company's problems, then started to make false invoices to cover his own expenditure. They covered the cost of holidays, furniture, clothes and credit cards.
For Kennedy, Andrew Nuttall said that initially the aim had been for the company to survive, and did not get back onto a sound financial footing until 2003.
Sentencing Kennedy, Judge Jeffrey Lewis said his original intention of trying to save his company had become superseded by the desire to maintain his lifestyle.