More legal woes for Cedric Lee

Cedric Lee FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines—Now faced with grave coercion and serious illegal detention charges related to the Jan. 22 beating of TV host and actor Vhong Navarro that may land him in jail pending trial, Cedric Lee also has to contend with a tax evasion case filed against him by the Bureau of Internal Revenue last month.

The Department of Justice has set on April 28 the first hearing of a preliminary investigation it is conducting on the tax evasion case.

The BIR has sued Lee and his company, Izumo Contractors Inc., for tax liabilities amounting to P194.47 million. Also included in the complaint with Lee, who is president/chief executive officer, are Izumo’s chief operating officer John K. Ong and its financial officer Judy Gutierrez Lee.

They were all charged with willful attempt to evade or defeat taxes and deliberate failure to supply correct and accurate information in the annual Income Tax Returns (ITR) for taxable years 2006 to 2009, in violation of Sections 254 and 255 of the National Internal Revenue Code of 1997.

Senior Assistant State Prosecutor Edna Valenzuela said Wednesday she has designated Assistant State Prosecutor Stewart Mariano to take charge of the preliminary investigation of the tax evasion complaint.

Valenzuela said that she did not form a panel to do the investigation anymore because she did not expect Lee’s case would involve voluminous documents such as the tax evasion complaint against businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, the alleged mastermind behind the P10-billion pork barrel scam.

For his part, Mariano said, he sent a subpoena to Lee’s lawyer Howard Calleja last Friday and the latter asked for a delay because his client was still working on the two charges against him in the Navarro case.

Mariano said he set the first hearing on April 28.

The filing of the tax evasion complaint against Lee came almost two months after Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares said her office was looking into the financial records of Lee, who caught her and the media’s attention after Navarro accused him and his companions of beating him up and extorting money from him inside the condominium unit of Deniece Cornejo in Makati City last Jan.22.

Navarro had filed multiple charges against Lee and his companions.

Cornejo also slapped the television host with a rape complaint but a DOJ panel has since dropped the charge.

The DOJ has filed charges of serious illegal detention and grave coercion against Lee and his group and the Metropolitan trial Court of Taguig has issued warrants for their arrest.

The group may post bail on the grave coercion charge but not in the serious illegal detention case, which is non-bailable.

Lee caught the BIR’s attention after he described himself as a “reputable businessman” who owned several companies.

The case against Izumo arose from  confidential information received by Henares’ office “denouncing the company for tax evasion committed via non-declaration of income realized from its business.”

A BIR check of Izumo’s clients showed the company received P302.63 million in  payments from 2006 to 2009 from the city governments of Butuan, San Juan, Pasay as well as provincial government of Davao del Sur and municipal government of Tagudin, Ilocos Sur.

But Izumo declared in its ITR only a total amount of P76.22 million for 2006 to 2009.

“A comparison of the gross income declared by Izumo in the said years as against the income it received as certified by its… clients… revealed that Izumo deliberately failed to declare its correct taxable base by substantially underdeclaring its taxable income by P88.79 m or 1,602 percent in 2006, by P36.93 m or 404 percent in 2007, by P9.49 m or 44 percent in 2008, and by P91.20 m or 227 percent in 2009,” the BIR had said in a statement.

Underdeclaring of taxable income by more than 30 percent is considered substantial and constitutes prima facie case of fraud tantamount to tax evasion, the BIR said.

RELATED STORIES

Did Deniece Cornejo lambast Vhong Navarro on social media?

Arrest warrant out vs Cedric Lee, et al.