An Indian-origin director of a Singaporean company has been fined by a court here for over SGD 1 million (USD 785,314) and sentenced to two months’ jail for various offences related to under-declaring the value of imported vehicles, including a Porsche, between October 2018 and February 2024.Thiyambarawatta Subash Indrajith, the director of car firm Concordway, pleaded guilty to nine charges under the Customs Act, which involved evading more than SGD 161,251 worth of duty on 34 imported vehicles.Ten other charges were taken into consideration during sentencing – four charges for fraudulent evasion of Goods and Services Tax (GST), and six charges for abetment by intentionally aiding in the making of untrue declarations to fraudulently evade GST.The jail term and fine were imposed in the State Courts on April 24, Singapore Customs and the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said in a joint statement on Tuesday.The SGD 1,068,000 fine was imposed for fraudulently evading the duty, while the two months’ jail term was imposed for under-declaring the values of 21 vehicles at the point of registration with LTA, leading to over SGD 1 million in underpayment of the additional registration fee.The 59-year-old Singaporean has until May 25 to pay the fine for his customs offences, failing which he will serve 12 months and two weeks’ imprisonment in default.Concordway is an importer of motor vehicles from overseas suppliers in Japan and the United Kingdom, and also provides services to customers wanting to source and import vehicles from overseas suppliers through Subash’s contacts.Customs began investigations after an individual importer of a Porsche 718 Cayman Style Edition submitted documents stating a suspiciously low declared value, according to a Channel News Asia report.Based on information obtained from this importer, Customs officers searched Subash’s residence.He then admitted to assisting clients in importing vehicles for commissions of SGD 3,000 to SGD 4,000 by liaising with overseas suppliers to provide invoices with suppressed values significantly lower than the actual vehicle prices.The false invoices were then submitted to customs as supporting documents for their import.To conceal the money trail, payments were split into two transactions. A suppressed payment corresponding to the declared value and a balance payment, which was the difference between the actual and declared values.Subash would also remit lump sums to overseas suppliers to cover balance payments for multiple vehicles in order to avoid detection.For fraudulently evading duty on imported goods, Subash faced a fine of up to 20 times the amount of duty evaded or up to two years’ jail or both.For giving incorrect information in relation to any matter affecting the additional registration fee chargeable, he may have been fined up to SGD 10,000 or faced a jail term of up to six months, in addition to the payment of any under-charged fees, according to the Channel report.