Two cheating Kent businessmen were jailed today and banned from being directors for 10 years after a £700,000 VAT fraud.

Keith Chamberlain, 42, of London Road, Dover, and friend Rhonnan Mundy, 49, of Mill Lane, Deal, were each sentenced to two years and eight months.

Sarah Giddins, prosecuting, told Canterbury Crown Court the fraud involved 10 separate companies.

She said: "They were registered with the intent to cheat the Inland Revenue by submitting fake VAT receipts.

"They set up VAT registrations and then falsified documentations and invoices to claim back VAT."

The two crooks used bogus receipts from legitimate companies, including Bovis Homes, Travis Perkins "and other companies of that stature".

None of the companies had any knowledge of ever dealing with Mundy and Chamberlain, the prosecutor said.

Ms Giddins said from 2007 to 2010, the pair used companies to claim £707,597. They received £598,550 before Customs officials began investigating.

The prosecutor said Mundy set up Kent Farm Produce Limited prior to 2007, when he had admitted fraud and had been banned from being a director for 11 years.

"Mundy had done this before," she said. "He knew how to operate the fraud to submit the claims - to successfully cheat the Revenue."

The court heard the VAT cash went into bank accounts controlled by Chamberlain.

"There after a very substantial amount was withdrawn in cash, £400,000, and some of that was paid directly into bank accounts controlled by Mundy," Ms Giddins added.

More than £250,000 of the cash has never been traced, the court was told.
Some of the cheques were used by Mundy to pay for school fees "and other living expenses", added Ms Giddins.

Peter Forbes, for Chamberlain, said he was "tempted by what to him was easy money."

He had been in the building and painting trade for many years, "not always successfully", and "this seemed a way of receiving money for nothing".