Former company director sentenced to 42 months for tax evasion

A former company director who was disqualified last year after siphoning off nearly €1 million from his firm’s PayPal account, has been given a three-and-a-half year prison sentence, with 12 months suspended.

Alan Barrett, of Ashbourne, Co Meath, who was director and secretary of the events registration company, Event Elephant Ltd, was sentenced after pleading guilty last week to VAT fraud and tax evasion totalling more than €1.07 million. The businessman pleaded guilty to one charge of filing an incorrect return of personal income tax, and nine charges of filing incorrect returns on behalf of Event Elephant Ltd.

Following the sentencing, Revenue commissioner Liam Irwin warned of a tough response to non-compliance.

“Revenue operates on the presumption of honesty. However, anyone who engages in evasion can expect a strong Revenue response. This outcome reflects the seriousness and unacceptability of tax and duty evasion,” Mr Irwin said.

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Barrett was last year disqualified by the High Court from acting as a company director for five years after he was found to have siphoned off €967,276 from the business PayPal account to his own business account.

He was formerly joint owner of the company, which operated a self-service online event registration website allowing customers use the site to create their own web pages to advertise and sell tickets.

Along with charities, its users included high-profile sports organisations including Arsenal and Newcastle football clubs and airlines such as British Airways.