The national vocational education and training (VET) regulator Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) has welcomed the conviction of three Indian-origin businessmen who operated fake training organisations in Melbourne and received more than $2 million in fraudulent subsidies from the Victorian government.
Baljit Singh, Rekha Arora, Rakesh Kumar and Mukesh Sharma were each convicted in September of conspiring to dishonestly influence a Commonwealth public official and dealing with proceeds of crime, AAP reports.
The group was operating two training colleges - the St Stephen Institute of Technology in Reservoir and the Symbiosis Institute of Technical Education in Footscray which purportedly provided vocational education and training courses for international and Australian students.
During the sentencing, County Court Judge Michael O'Connell said prosecutors had described the schools as being a sham.
The schools were found to be operating out of rented premises. It employed a minimum number as staff, created and maintained generic policy and procedure documents and teaching guides and even had a number of classrooms and fake timetables.
But they failed to provide any genuine teaching or assessments to students who, in some cases never actually enrolled.
Between March 2014 and July 2015 the group received $2,007,487 in subsidies from the Victorian government, the court heard.
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"These subsidies were being fraudulently claimed because students were not being properly taught, if at all," Judge O'Connell said.
Once the fraud was uncovered, the schools and their communications were put under surveillance.
The investigation captured some of the group talking about how they'd respond to an audit that had been set up.
The trio at the helm of operations has been jailed.
While Singh was sentenced to six years behind bars with being eligible for parole after five years, Kumar and Sharma were each sentenced to five years in prison, with four-year non-parole periods.
Rekha Arora was sentenced to three years prison but released on a $5000 bond.
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"Registration of education institutes cancelled"
The national vocational education and training (VET) regulator Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA) welcomed the conviction.
ASQA Chief Commissioner Mark Paterson said the group presented fraudulent documents to ASQA auditors during audits undertaken in August 2014 and June 2015.
“ASQA worked closely with the Australian Federal Police, which was conducting its own investigation, to ensure the illegal actions of these individuals were stopped,” Mr Paterson said.
ASQA cancelled Symbiosis Institute of Technical Education Pty Ltd’s registration as a provider of courses to overseas students and suspended its registration as a provider of VET services to Australian students in August 2015. Its VET registration expired in February 2016.
St Stephen Institute of Technology also had its registration as a provider of VET services suspended in August 2015. Its registration was cancelled in November 2017.
“There is no place in Australia’s VET sector for companies and individuals who are not genuinely committed to providing high-quality training and assessment that arms learners with the skills and experience that employers need and want,” Mr Paterson said.
