Court of Appeal: Father and son jailed for 8 months after DPP appeals unduly lenient suspended sentences for fraud
Reading time: 4 minutes
The directors of a family business in Limerick were given three year suspended sentences when they were found to have deliberately made false tax returns, resulting in an estimated €0.25m loss to the Revenue. The Director of Public Prosecutions appealed contending that the fully suspended sentences were unduly lenient; imposing 8-month custodial sentences, Mr Justice John Edwards agreed with the DPP in finding that the trial judge had erred in law when he failed to identify the respondents’ lack of cooperation as an aggravating factor.
About this case:
- Judgment:
Background
Father and son, Mr William Slattery and Mr Jonathan Slattery, were directors of Slattery Ventures Limited – a company that owned fast food outlets at a number of locations in Limerick, as well as a retail premises comprising a garage and shop.
In 2008, the company was selected for a revenue audit on account of not having registered for the plastic bag levy.
Mr Tony Ryan, a Higher Executive Officer at the Revenue Commissioners conducted the audit, the outset of which they opted not to make a voluntary disclosure.
A number of irregularities were identified by the audit, including:
Each pleaded guilty to four counts involving various offences contrary to the Taxes Consolidation Act 1997, as amended, each count of which carried a potential maximum sentence of five years imprisonment:
In June 2015 they were both sentenced to three years imprisonment, to be suspended for a period of three years.
In the Court of Appeal, the Director of Public Prosecutions sought a review of those sentences on the grounds that they were unduly lenient.
Court of Appeal
The DPP submitted that the sentencing judge erred in relying on alleged delays as being a relevant mitigating factor and submitted that there was no culpable delay on the part of the prosecution in that adjournments that took place from the time of the return for trial occurred as a result of requests on the part of the respondents.
In addition, the DPP submitted that the judge failed to take sufficient account of the level of deliberation and calculation involved. Specifically, the respondents had:
Furthermore, while the trial judge acknowledged that the respondents failed to make a voluntary disclosure, he did not identify this as an aggravating factor – referring to the importance of incentivising cooperation as per The People (Director of Public Prosecutions) v. Begley IECCA 32.
The DPP submitted that there was a clear error in principle, in failing to clearly identify all aggravating factors and in misidentifying delay as a mitigating factor; and that the judge further erred in failing to identify where on the scale of offending the respondents’ offence ought to be located.
Analysis and Decision
Delivering the judgment of the three-judge Court of Appeal, Mr Justice John Edwards stated that the Court agreed with the DPP’s submission that the Slattery’s case was one which merited a custodial sentence to be served.
The suspension of the entirety of the term was to give excessive discount for mitigation; it represented a clear divergence from the norm and consequently was an error of principle.
On the basis that the correct headline sentence was three years imprisonment, Justice Edwards stated that with mitigation taken into account, only the last 18 months of the sentence should have been suspended.
However, the Court considered it inappropriate to impose this sentence given that twenty months elapsed since the original sentencing, stating that it would involve considerable additional hardship for the respondents to now have to go into custody.
Consequently, the Court suspended all but the final eight months of the three-year sentence.
Share this article:
Subscribe to our newsletter to not miss articles like this one:
SUBSCRIBE
