UK tax authority compliance officer gets suspended sentence for aiding money laundering

A compliance officer at HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has received a 14-month suspended sentence for helping her husband launder £3.3 million.

Kuldip Badesha used HMRC systems to produce letters that included fake National Insurance numbers and signatures, the agency said. She gave them to her husband, Ranbir Singh, who used them to open two bank accounts, through which he laundered the money between 2015 and 2018.

Badesha registered 12 firms with Companies House and did work for them, but failed to declare this to HMRC as a potential conflict of interest. None were registered with HMRC for VAT purposes.

The then-compliance officer also produced two fake HMRC letters that enabled Singh to open two personal bank accounts with Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander, said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in a statement.

Husband jailed

Singh pleaded guilty to two counts of money laundering and has been sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. He was previously convicted of three other offences following recent police investigations, and is currently serving more than six years for fraud, money laundering and sexual assault.

He previously served an 11-year jail sentence from 2008 for kidnapping.

The entire source of the laundered money has not been identified but some was linked to former financial adviser and convicted fraudster Stewart Mark Groves, who took money from a former England footballer and was jailed in 2019, HMRC said.

Living beyond her means

Investigators discovered Badesha was leading a lifestyle beyond her means. This included leasing a luxury Bentley car and going on “long-haul holidays”, HMRC said.

“This was an appalling breach of trust from Kuldip Badesha. She abused her position to help her husband launder millions of pounds. Money laundering allows criminals to profit from the misery they inflict on their victims, and often funds even more serious crimes,” said Ben Rollins, HMRC’s head of anti-corruption.