An Indian businessman who owns service station in NSW pocketed his employee’s $12,000 parental leave payment from Centrelink and then created fake records to “deceive” investigators. he has been slapped with a $19,720 and further fined to his company $98,700.
Mr Singh, the former manager and part-owner of the service station and restaurant in NSW’s central west, has been fined $19,720 and his company a further $98,700 by the Federal Circuit Court in a case brought by the Fair Work Ombudsman.
Surprisingly this is the first legal action brought by the workplace cop over failure to transfer Paid Parental Leave funds to an employee.
What happened:
The 29 years of old Indian woman worked as a chef at his restaurant on a 487 skilled regional employer nomination visa. She is now an Australian citizen. After she had a child in 2015, the Department of Human Services transferred $11,538 to Mr Singh for the company to transfer to her. Mr Singh kept that money and did not pass it to the lady. After repeatedly asking Mr Singh for the money, she complained to DHS, which referred the case to the FWO for investigation.
In an interview with Fair Work inspectors in 2015, Mr Singh claimed he had paid the employee her parental leave in cash.
“I’m ready to pay this again,” he said. “If you guys think I did something wrong I’m ready to pay her again.”
Mr Singh later provided a Fair Work inspector with a false document purporting to prove the payment was made to the employee’s husband. Mr Singh eventually paid the money in October 2015, more than five months late, after the FWO challenged the veracity of the document.
In court, Mr Singh admitted committing a contravention of the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010, as well as a number of contraventions of record-keeping and pay slip laws under the Fair Work Act.
Fair Work Ombudsman Natalie James said the conduct was completely unacceptable. “New parents have enough on their minds without having to chase recalcitrant employers over their taxpayer funded paid parental leave,” Ms James said in a statement.
“Any employer thinking they can cover up breaches of work laws by creating false records or lying to Fair Work Inspectors – beware. There are new higher penalties for record-keeping breaches and the risk of criminal prosecution for this self-serving and fraudulent conduct.”
New penalties came into effect in September 2017. Maximum penalties for failing to keep employee records or issue pay slips have doubled to $63,000 for a company and $12,600 for an individual, and the maximum penalty for knowingly making or keeping false or misleading employee records has tripled to $12,600 for an individual.
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