The Tax Office worker is the first person to be prosecuted after a National Anti-Corruption Commission investigation.
A former Australian Taxation Office employee has been sentenced to five years in jail for accepting bribes from a person he was auditing in exchange for reducing millions of dollars in personal and business tax debts.
It is the first criminal prosecution stemming from the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which was established in July last year and took responsibility for the joint investigation originally led by the former Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity and the ATO.Wenfeng Wei, 42, was sentenced to five years in prison with a non-parole period of two years and six months at the Parramatta District Court on Tuesday.
The former ATO employee had pleaded guilty in July 2023 to five charges, including three counts of unauthorised access or modification of restricted data, one count of a Commonwealth public official receiving a bribe and one count of official abuse of public office to gain advantage. The NACC said it has 13 corruption investigations under way, seven of which were inherited from the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity. The corruption body is also involved in 25 investigations being led by other agencies.
The commission has received 2637 referrals since it was formed, almost 76 per cent of which it has excluded as they did not raise a corruption issue or a Commonwealth public official was not involved. It has conducted 13 preliminary investigations – during which it can use its investigatory powers to compel people to provide information or documents – and has found in six of the cases, there were no corruption issues.
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