A 35-year-old Russian woman has avoided jail time after taking advantage of still receiving Centrelink whilst secretly transferring $750,000 from offshore accounts.
Nadezda Bek transferred funds between Russian credit cards to two Australian accounts and kept them under the taxable and reportable threshold of $10,000 as the payments were between $8,000 and $9,500.
She did this more than 70 times between 2014 and 2018, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.
Bek was seen smiling as she left Southport District Court on Thursday, as she avoided any time in prison.
She pleaded guilty to one count of conducting transactions to avoid reporting requirements relating to threshold transactions.
The court was told that Bek and her former husband were trying to transfer their Russian wealth to Australia without alerting any authorities. The court was not told how much taxpayers’ money Bek had received whilst on Centrelink family benefits.
Bek’s barrister Tony Kimmins said that she had no connection to money laundering, drugs or terrorism.
“It was a tax matter as opposed to any other nefarious matter,” he said.
The Australian Taxation Office is now investigating into the matter.
