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Less than two weeks after the raid, the couple booked business class one-way tickets to Chennai.
The couple carried out the fraud using forged documents.
A New Zealand-based Indian-origin couple has been found guilty in a major fraud case linked to the country’s child welfare agency, Oranga Tamariki (OT). The woman, who worked for the government, used her job to approve fake or inflated payments to her husband’s construction company. The case, based in Christchurch, led to losses of more than NZ$2 million (around Rs 10 crore).
As reported by The New Zealand Herald, Neha Sharma was working as a property and facilities manager at OT when she began sending work to her husband Amandeep Sharma’s business, Divine Connection Ltd. She secretly approved more than 103 payments tied to 326 invoices submitted by the company between July 22, 2021 and October 28, 2022. The total of these payments was $2.1 million. Many of these payments were for jobs that were either overpriced, never done or involved personal purchases like a TV for their home.
According to the report, Neha never told her team that she was related to the company. She was seen as a reliable employee, but secretly she was managing Divine Connection’s work, like taking calls, assigning jobs and even using her work computer and time to do so. She added the company to the agency’s system herself and gave it most of the jobs. In some cases, she left other staff out of the process to avoid questions.
The fraud went unnoticed for over a year until late 2022, when someone noticed irregularities in the invoices. On October 26, 2022, a facilities team member at OT raised concerns that Sharma was giving jobs to Divine Connection, going against usual practice. It was pointed out that she had already been told not to give work to anyone other than City Care which OT had a contract.
Neha was called for a meeting with the team to talk about it. It had also come up that the company was registered at her home address. But before the meeting could happen, she resigned.
Around 20 minutes after she quit, Amandeep was removed as the director of Divine Connection and replaced by Prince Bajaj. The company address was also updated. The following month, Bajaj became the new shareholder too.
After leaving OT, Neha got another job at the New Zealand Transport Agency. To get hired, she used a fake reference again, and this time with her husband pretending to be her former boss.
On March 30, the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) raided the couple’s home. They owned three cars and three properties and had nearly $800,000 (approximately Rs 4 crore) in their joint bank accounts.
Neha told the SFO she had informed OT about her connection to Divine Connection and claimed she signed a conflict of interest form but was told not to worry. Amandeep said they had sold the company to Prince Bajaj. But Bajaj later told the SFO he didn’t know he had been listed as the company’s director and shareholder and said it was done without his consent. There was no record of any money being paid for the sale.
Less than two weeks after the raid, the couple booked business class one-way tickets to Chennai for April 14. This was surprising as they had things lined up in Christchurch, including parenting classes and travel plans. Neha had also bought baby expo tickets.
Before flying out, they moved nearly $800,000 from their bank accounts to ones in India and tried to sell off their cars and properties. They boarded their flight on April 14 with 80 kg of luggage between them. The High Court later froze their assets. The SFO found that money had been sent from Amandeep’s Indian bank account to seven other accounts in India.
Sharma pleaded guilty to several charges, including using forged documents, money laundering and obtaining money through deception. She was sentenced to three years in prison. Her lawyer claimed she was affected by “baby brain”, but the judge noted she had shown no real remorse and made no effort to return any of the money. She is now serving her sentence in a special unit for mothers with babies. Their older child is reportedly with relatives in India.
Amandeep also admitted to charges and will be sentenced in June.
- Location :
Delhi, India, India
- First Published:
