The ex-wife of former ATO deputy commissioner Michael Cranston allegedly received payments described as “wages” from a company allegedly involved in a tax fraud scheme.
Cranston’s children Adam and Lauren, and eight others, have been charged with offences relating to the alleged scheme, which police say involved diverting millions of dollars from Plutus Payroll intended for the tax office through a series of companies for personal gain.
Seven people – Lauren and Adam Cranston, Daniel Rostankovski, Dev Menon, Simon Anquetil, Devyn Hammond and Jason Onley – have been charged with conspiracy to defraud. Aaron Paul and Christopher Guillan are charged with dealing with alleged proceeds of crime, and Rostankovski and Daniel Hausmann are charged with blackmail.
Michael Cranston resigned last week from his position at the ATO after being charged with two counts of abuse of public office for allegedly obtaining information and exercising influence to obtain a benefit for his son.
Separate from the criminal investigations, the ATO has frozen the assets of more than 60 parties believed to have some link to the scheme.
Affidavits released by the NSW supreme court set out further details of the allegations against the parties and the operation of the scheme.
The complex scheme allegedly involved Plutus receiving money from companies that used its payroll services and passing it to “bottom” or “bot” companies with “straw directors” who were controlled by the alleged conspirators. Instead of sending the tax liabilities to the ATO, the conspirators allegedly retained them for personal gain. The straw directors were “puppets of the suspected offenders”, police allege.
Police allege that one company, BRW Services, was used to provide payments to Lauren Cranston, Paul, and Hammond.
The company’s accounts also made payments worth $8,259 for what the AFP officer’s affidavit described as “Robyn Cran Wages”. The affidavit said the ATO had issued a “garnishee notice” to the company in May, and that BRW Services was allegedly operating as one of the bot companies.
Robyn Cranston, Michael Cranston’s ex-wife, is not a party to the freezing order and has not been charged.
One director of the bot companies, Matthew Wilson, told an AFP officer that Onley asked him to receive money to hide it from bikies, the affidavit alleges.
“About six months ago, Onley asked Wilson to be the director of a company (Active Management Solutions Pty Ltd) to hide money from ‘the bikies’,” the affidavit says.
Phone intercepts in the affidavits reveal Michael Cranston, who at the time was still an ATO deputy commissioner, telling Adam how the tax office would deal with the web of companies.
“They mount a case, put it in front of a fucking judge and say ‘Adam Cranston is director penalty liable. He is the real director’. And you can say legally it’s not, and they go, ‘right, we’re having a crack’.”
He continues: “And they’ll have a crack and, but you might not get on there and then what we do is go with unexplained wealth. Fuck em. So they go in, saying, but the thing is, you have not benefitted from that PAYG abuse.”
When his son says that he has “no unexplained wealth”, his father responds: “You’ve got a lot of fucking cars, mate.”
The affidavits also set out the panicked discussions of the alleged conspirators Lauren Cranston and Dev Hammond when they were locked out of accounts which police allege show they carried out accounting and book keeping for the bot companies.
“Yeah you need to call your mate cause someone’s locked us out of A1 [one of the bot companies],” Lauren Cranston is alleged to have said.
The affidavit shows that some of the directors of the bot companies allegedly turned on the conspirators and attempted to blackmail them.
This led to the creation of what was described by the AFP as a “blackmail deed”.
In one intercepted conversation Menon allegedly tells Rostankovski: “So practically D, a couple of things, one once they sign this, they’ll be fucking on the hook right?”
He later continues: “They’re signing all the documents and the affidavit. The second thing is, basically bro, there’s going to be some risk with this money as you know. The ATO are going to be watching, you know where they’re at ...”
Menon goes on to suggest that one of the alleged straw directors should call the ATO, in order to protect themselves.
“And they’re going to want to ask a million questions. Say look, ‘I’ll come back to you, I’ll organise a meeting.’ Never organise it. That would be fucked.”
In a further exchange where a number of the alleged conspirators were present, Menon says: “I mean, our best case scenario here is we shut down Plutus, no dramas, and the directors disappear and the fuckin’ bottoms [bot companies] take the hit and the ATO go, oh fuck, Plutus did the right thing fuckin’ with this.”
Later in the exchange Anquetil says: “Fuckin’ hell. Why did we fuckin’ get into this shit.”
Adam Cranston responds: “I don’t know.”
• This article was amended on 26 June 2016 to correct references to Robyn Cranston being Michael Cranston’s wife. She is his ex-wife.
