A Northland woman was sentenced to home detention after making false applications for COVID-19 support.
Amiria Ihaka pleaded guilty to representative charges of dishonestly using Small Business Cashflow Scheme (SBCS), the scheme top up, and COVID support applications to obtain $35,000 she wasn’t entitled to.
In the Auckland District Court on 10 November, Ihaka was sentenced to 8 months home detention.
COVID relief schemes
In May 2020, applications opened for the Small Business Cashflow Scheme, which was designed to support small businesses that were adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In February 2021, the COVID-19 Resurgence Support Payment (RSP) scheme was introduced to provide grants to businesses adversely affected by the raise in the alert levels and which experienced a 30% drop in revenue due to a COVID-19 alert level increase to level 2 or higher.
The COVID-19 Support Payment (CSP) scheme available in 2022 was to help support viable and ongoing businesses or organisations which experienced a 40% or more drop in revenue.
All the schemes were implemented under urgency using a “High Trust” application model so businesses could access funds to support the business in a timely fashion. Payments were for business purposes only.
The offending
From February 2022 to April 2023 dishonestly submitted via her MyIR account five COVID relief applications to IR to obtain payments that she knew she was not entitled to.
She also filed a GST return for the period ending 28 February 2023 with false information.
In total, Ihaka sought and received $35,000 from IR for the various COVID-19 related applications made in her name using her web logon.
An analysis of bank accounts showed the money was spent on personal items, not business purposes.
GST charge
Ihaka registered for GST I July 2022, for a business in construction subcontracting sector.
She faced one charge of providing misleading GST information and was convicted and discharged.