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The Inland Revenue Department has been ordered to pay damages for breaching Ric Parore’s rights. (File photo)
A real estate agent has been awarded more than $75,000 because his right to silence was breached during an Inland Revenue tax investigation.
Richard (Ric) Parore, 79, faced civil and criminal tax cases, both resolved in his favour.
This week it was topped off with a judge awarding him damages for a breach of his rights, fixed at nearly $71,000 to cover legal costs, plus $5000 for emotional harm.
Parore said on Wednesday he hoped the whole affair was now “well and done”. The damages awarded did not cover his full legal costs.
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“If you feel you are right, it pays to pursue it,” he said.
His lawyer, David Weaver, said he hoped it was the last chapter of a case that had taken four or five years in various forms and had been long and arduous.
Enough resources had been put in to it at all levels, he said.
Weaver is a specialist in tax law and said he believed it was the first time damages had been awarded against IRD for breach of fair trial rights.
Supplied
Auckland real estate agent Ric Parore, 79, has won damages in a Bill of Rights case against the Inland Revenue Department for breaching his right to silence.
IRD had been warned before for similar actions and went ahead anyway against Parore, he said.
“He should never have faced trial at all,” Weaver said.
An Inland Revenue spokesperson said it was taking time to consider the decision and had not yet decided whether it would appeal.
The Auckland real estate agent had been discharged from bankruptcy in October 2014, according to a decision from the High Court in Wellington. IRD later started an investigation of his GST position.
At first it was a civil investigation, but then charges alleging tax evasion, or attempted evasion, were filed against him at the Auckland District Court in 2019.
Justice Cheryl Gwyn found IRD had been “highly reckless at best”. (File photo)
Those charges were eventually stopped because the “notice of proposed adjustment” he had to file to dispute the assessments made against him in the civil case had effectively disclosed his defence to the later criminal prosecution. The notice had set Inland Revenue on a line of inquiry, court decisions said.
Two trials were started, although neither went the full distance.
Justice Cheryl Gwyn said IRD had previously been told that dealing with civil proceedings before criminal proceedings risked breaching a defendant’s fair trial rights by the loss of his right to silence.
An earlier judge had described Parore as having been put in an impossible position.
IRD then tried to revive the civil proceedings but failed, leaving Parore’s statement of his tax position to be deemed to be correct.
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In the lastest decision Justice Gwyn said the decision to lay charges when it did was “highly reckless at best”.
In its defence of Parore’s breach of rights claim, IRD said he had kept more than $55,000 of GST, which should have been paid to Inland Revenue but wasn’t.
The judge said the legal position was that Parore’s statement of his tax position was deemed to be correct and he didn’t owe tax.
