Getting away with tax evasion not easy, this Irish expat will agree

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Having spent the better part of six years shuttling between his offices in Delhi and Mumbai, all that the Irish citizen saw over those 60 days between August and October were the “appalling” insides of the Mumbai prison.

Things escalated quickly for Casserly on August 5 when he went to the same BKC building he walked out of last week, to answer the department’s summons. Four decades in the aviation industry in Canada, Saudi Arabia, the UK, Bahrain and Dubai mattered little, and the self-confessed nomad was soon just another undertrial cooped in with 2,800 others.

The Irishman is at present Cambata’s senior-most executive in India and felt the full might of the service tax department in the absence of the firm’s chairman Nelson Cambata, two promoters Albert Cambata and Bruce Cambata and director Teresa Fulkrod. Casserly, therefore, was held responsible by the service tax department for Cambata Aviation’s evasion of Rs 18.86 crore in dues between April 2014 and June 2015.

“We cocked up,” Casserly said, admitting that his company had grappled with financial difficulties in the last two years, resulting in salaries remaining unpaid. “You couldn’t blame the company but they were trying to do something to get out of this mess but it didn’t work out. I’m always conscious that if you point one finger, there’s three pointing at you,” he said.

But having paid 90 per cent of the default in the weeks since the release, Casserly believes Cambata has told to the service tax department that it is serious about paying up. “A lot of companies haven’t paid it. Kingfisher (Airlines) is one. Why haven’t they arrested him,” he asked, referring to Vijay Mallya, who owns Kingfisher.

A senior tax analyst is in agreement with Casserly. According to him, the department must raise its threshold for arrest from the existing Rs 1 crore. “The threshold needs to be raised to Rs 50 or Rs 100 crore or else every small or medium size company would face this issue. It is very regrettable that a professional who may not have had the intention to commit a default was arrested,” he said.

Driving to a luxury hotel near the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport for a meeting, Casserly looks back at his prison stint with little bitterness and hails prison officials for doing their jobs under “very difficult circumstances”. “You have 2,800 people who don’t want to be there, I mean the majority don’t want to be there. I don’t think anything has changed since 1925 at Arthur Road prison. But the management and the control of 2,800 people in such a small facility is a challenge. And they do a very good job and a majority of them are very nice people,” he said.

As a prosperous foreigner in jail, though, Casserly knew he could fall back on the Irish Embassy whenever he felt his rights were being breached. “I was very vocal about exercising my rights,” he said.
The experience of the last three months has bracketed Casserly among the rare foreign executives who haven’t left the country the moment an FIR is filed. “I have expended the pain, I might as well get the gain. It’s my good name, I’m a professional. But I’m not the first one, I know of a foreigner who ran from state to state just to escape arrest. It was crazy,” he said.

According to Manish Mishra, Executive Director, Mazars Advisory Private Limited, discretionary powers of the service tax department have been enhanced significantly in the last couple of years to boost the recovery mechanism. “Placing a senior executive under arrest, however, should be the final resort after exhausting all other possible remedies available in such cases. A distinction needs to be made for defaulters with genuine reasons and those who have a history (of defaults). Exercising such powers indiscriminately may lead to abuse of powers and the judgement whether a case merits arrest or not has to be made at a senior level,” he said.

By choosing to continue at Cambata, Casserly said he was hopeful that “common sense will prevail”. “I am still the COO of Cambata and will remain so until we get our other issues resolved. Be that an investor coming in, be that rejuvenating and getting additional funds, whatever that may be. Because it is a good business. We have got issues like all other companies,” he said.
Advocate Kanishk Jayant, Casserly’s counsel, said his client had shown “exceptional grace” in ensuring that the service tax dues were paid instead of entering into a “blame game” with the Cambata family. “For an Irish citizen to run from pillar to post in the absence of the owners to clear the tax liability and to simultaneously defend himself shows exceptional conduct,” he said.

Along with reviving his company’s fortunes, Casserly is also helping out a couple of friends he made in jail who, unlike him, have nobody working for them on the outside. “These guys I am sponsoring now have never had recourse of law, never had representation until they get somebody on the outside working for them, which costs money. And a lot of them don’t have any money,” he said.

Of the two men he is providing legal aid to, one is a 20-year-old accused of kidnapping and molesting his girlfriend and has been chargesheeted for the offence. Casserly won’t reveal the crime for which the second man is behind the bars, just said he brought him eggs in jail.
“His rights are being affected. He has nobody on the outside working for him. So if nobody fights for him, he would be in there forever,” said Casserly.