A primary school teacher involved in a $431,000 tax evasion scheme with her husband was described by a judge as “wilfully blind” to the offending.

Now, the “extremely proud and passionate” educator has been struck off the national teaching register.

Uputaua Muaiava and her husband Tamanini Muaiava were convicted three years ago on 65 charges each of evading or attempting to evade the payment of goods and services tax and PAYE.

Tamanini was jailed for 21 months while Uputaua, a first offender, was sentenced to nine months of home detention.

Inland Revenue said that between 2014 and 2017 the couple jointly operated businesses supplying labour to agricultural growers in South Auckland, but kept few records, traded mainly in cash and did not pay tax.

They described the couple as being of “modest means” with few assets and did not exhibit a lavish lifestyle, despite the fraud.

However, an Inland Revenue spokesman said their extended family accepted considerable income which arose from their offending.

When confronted that their companies were not meeting their tax obligations, the couple would wind one company up and start a new one to continue trading, three times using their adult children as “puppet” directors or shareholders.

The total tax evaded was estimated to be $431,644.

While running the companies with her husband, Uputaua Muaiava’s main occupation was teaching at an Auckland primary school.

The Teaching Council was notified about her convictions in 2021.

She appeared before the council’s Complaints Assessment Committee in June 2022, and the New Zealand Teachers Disciplinary Tribunal cancelled her registration in June last year.

However, that decision has only recently been publicly released to the tribunal’s website.

Muaiava told the tribunal she was “extremely proud and passionate” about her teaching and wished to continue doing it.

She was ashamed of being sentenced in court, but the convictions did not reflect on her ability to teach and she was no threat to children, she said.

Muaiava stated that she was involved in the businesses to help her husband, and that the family did not gain financially from her offending.

They ran the business to provide jobs for family members who had come over from Samoa.

The family members were not entitled to IRD numbers as they were not supposed to work in New Zealand.

The tribunal said Muaiava’s offending was serious and occurred over a lengthy period of time, involving a large number of separate charges of tax evasion - 65 in total.

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The offending also continued after the IRD had made efforts to educate her and her husband about their tax obligations.

“There is no doubt that the convictions bring the profession into disrepute, involving as they do such a large amount of money and the breach of trust attached to fraudulent offending,” the tribunal decision said.

“It matters not that the offending did not occur in a school setting,” it said.

“In the tribunal’s view, only deregistration will sufficiently reflect the adverse effect of the respondent’s offending on her fitness to teach and/or its tendency to lower the reputation of the profession.”

The tribunal cancelled Muaiava’s registration.

When the Muaiavas were convicted, Inland Revenue spokesman Tony Morris said the offending was “straight theft from the community” and a gross abuse of trust.

“The offending not only involved the deliberate failure to file GST and PAYE returns but also the careful use of new companies to continue trading in the same business, with the same primary customers and in the same way,” Morris said.

“It’s why the judge found their offending was premeditated, repetitive and deliberate.”

In the Papakura District Court, Judge Gerard Winter accepted that Tamanini Muaiava felt pressure to pay his workers and may have tried to help them on occasions by giving them extra money for their special needs, such as family funerals.

However, the judge said he did not accept that neither he nor his family made no financial gain from the tax evasion.

Judge Winter said Uputaua Muaiava was of otherwise good character but was “wilfully blind” to what her husband was doing.

Ric Stevens spent many years working for the former New Zealand Press Association news agency, including as a political reporter at Parliament, before holding senior positions at various daily newspapers. He joined NZME’s Open Justice team in 2022 and is based in Hawke’s Bay. His writing in the crime and justice sphere is informed by four years of front-line experience as a probation officer.