The Fiji Revenue and Customs Service board has approved a $350k reward for a whistle blower that led to the recovery of six million dollars.

According to the FRCS, this has taken the overall whistle blower policy pay-out to $860k yielding total tax and penalty collections of $28m since the policy was introduce in 2014.

Chief executive, Visvanath Das reveals the taxpayer in question is again a supermarket that has a number of chain stores.

Das says given the gravity of the offence, FRCS applied maximum penalties as it involved trust funds – the Value Added Tax.

The total tax bill in this instance was $12m.

Das says the whistle blower informed FRCS of serious financial statement fraud committed by the supermarket to understate income tax and VAT.

Upon tax audit and raid the FRCS officers found that the supermarket, over the years, inflated trade credit amounts, did not account for certain receipts other than direct supermarket sales, purchased properties in family names using company funds, over claimed zero rated sales, undeclared income from other parts of business and engaged in general non-compliance behavior.