(Image source from: Daily Record)

An Indian-origin employer, director of a company in New South Wales has been charged with huge penalty by the court for withholding his employee’s $12,000 parental leave payment from Centrelink and then for lying and deceiving investigators.

Kulpreet Singh and his company, Noorpreet Pty Ltd, has been penalized over $19,720 and $98,700 respectively after he was found deliberately depriving an Indian employee of her parental leave payments.

He falsely claimed to Fair Work Ombudsman that he paid Centrelink parental leave payment to employee’s spouse in cash.

The employee is a former chef on a 487 skilled regional employer nomination visa and at present an Australian citizen.

According to the Fair Work Commission, she was 29 when she had a child and the Department of Human Services (DHS) transferred $11,538 to Noorpreet in April 2015 for the company to transfer the payment to her.

After Singh failed to pay the due amount, she took up the matter with FWO. After investigation, Singh provided a false document that he paid the parental leave funds in cash to the employee’s husband in May 2015.

After FWO challenged veracity of the document and frequent payment demand, Singh and Noorpreet eventually paid the parental leave fund to the employee in October 2015. However, he was taken into custody by FBO after he and his company admitted the wrongdoing under Paid Parental Leave Act 2010.

According to the Fair Work Commission Judge Nicholls said Singh had tried to deceive and conceal the failure to pay the employee her parental leave pay and had sought to deceive and mislead government agencies.

“Mr Singh was, to be blunt, well and truly caught out by the FWO, perpetrating a deliberate falsehood in relation to the false payment record,” he said.

By Sowmya Sangam