R v Rasila

• Jurisdiction: New Zealand
• Judge: Lang J
• Judgment Date: 12 May 2020
• Neutral Citation: [2020] NZHC 964
• Court: High Court
• Docket Number: CRI-2019-004-5696
• Date: 12 May 2020

The Queen

and

Sundeep Kilip Rasila

[2020] NZHC 964

Lang J

CRI-2019-004-5696

IN THE HIGH COURT OF NEW ZEALAND

AUCKLAND REGISTRY

I TE KŌTI MATUA O AOTEAROA

TĀMAKI MAKAURAU ROHE

Criminal Sentence — corruption and bribery of public official — use of position for personal gain — whether term of imprisonment should be converted to home detention — Crimes Act 1961

Appearances:

B Dickey for Crown

A J Holland for Mr Rasila

SENTENCING REMARKS OF Lang J

1 Mr Rasila, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of corruptly accepting a bribe. 1 The maximum penalty for that offence is seven years imprisonment. You originally faced another charge of using a document to obtain a pecuniary advantage. The Crown has offered no evidence on that charge and I now discharge you on it under s 147 of the Criminal Procedure Act 2011.

2 You have applied to be discharged without conviction under s 106 of the Sentencing Act 2002 but for reasons I will give in writing later today I decline to grant that application. I do not consider you have established the direct and indirect consequences of conviction are out of all proportion to the overall gravity of your offending.

The offending

3 The facts on which you are to be sentenced are contained in an agreed summary of facts. This reveals that you were employed by the Council as a procurement relationship specialist between June 2012 and 28 April 2016. This role required you to maintain the Council's relationship with suppliers of goods and services and, in particular, office supplies.

4 You and Mr Sunil Chand have been friends for a long time and at one stage both worked for the same employer. You also boarded with Mr Chand's family for a period of approximately six years between 2005 and 2011. You then maintained your friendship with Mr Chand after you began working for the Council. During this period Mr Chand went on to establish his own commercial printing and office stationery supply company, On Time Print Finishers Limited (On Time Print).

5 As part of its services, the Council supplies members of the public with property files for a fee. These contain information held by the Council that may be of interest to persons seeking to purchase or obtain information about properties in the Auckland area.

6 Up until 2015, the Council delivered its property files to recipients on compact discs. During that year the Council began investigating the possibility of delivering information to recipients on USB devices rather than compact discs. You were one of the Council's staff members responsible for investigating the proposed transition to USB devices. Up until that time your role at the Council had focussed on the maintenance of the Council's relationship with a single supplier of office products, a company called Staples Limited. Your involvement in the establishment of a new Council contract for the procurement for USB devices was therefore outside the normal course of your duties.

7 You knew, however, from your involvement in the process that the contract for the supply of USB devices to the Council would be awarded to the supplier who could supply the devices at the cheapest price. Between September and December 2015, you undertook your own investigations and obtained a quote for the supply of USB devices in bulk from an online wholesale company based in China. You then passed this on to Mr Chand with the suggestion that Mr Chand's company, On Time Print, should submit a quote to supply USB devices to the Council. The understanding between you was that, if On Time Print secured the contract, it would purchase USB devices from the Chinese company and on-sell them to the Council for a profit.

8 In January 2016 you received a quote from On Time Print to supply 22,000 USB devices to the Council. Between January and March 2016, you also sought quotes from other suppliers, including Staples Limited and the company that had formerly employed you and Mr Chand.

9 You provided the Council's management team with a spreadsheet showing the quote from On Time Print as well as other quotes for the supply of devices for a greater sum than that submitted by On Time Print. You did not, however, advise the management team of the quote you had obtained from the Chinese company. Nor did you disclose the fact that you had obtained another lower quote from your former employer.

10 Not surprisingly, the Council's management team awarded the contract for the supply of the devices to On Time Print as the lowest bidder. This meant the Council paid approximately $27,000 more than it would have done if it had been aware of the other quotes. Furthermore, On Time Print stood to make a profit of approximately $57,000 from the sale of the USB devices to the Council under the contract.

11 One of your last acts before leaving the Council's employment was to forward to Mr Chand a draft contract for the supply of 22,000 USB devices to the Council for the sum of $152,250 (exclusive of GST). Both Mr Chand and the Council subsequently signed the contract, which required On Time Print to supply the 22,000 devices in two equal consignments.

12 You left the Council's employment at the end of April 2016. In or about August 2016, after On Time Print had delivered the first consignment of USB devices, you approached Mr Chand and asked for a payment of $15,000 for facilitating the contract awarded to On Time Print. This amounted to approximately ten per cent of the original value of the contract. 2 You requested payment of $7,500 immediately, with the balance to be paid following delivery of the second consignment. Mr Chand drew a cheque payable on his company's account for the sum of $7,500 and handed this to you. You then cashed the cheque and deposited the bulk of the proceeds into your own bank account.

Starting point

13 The first stage in the sentencing process is to select a starting point for the sentence to be imposed on you. This reflects the sentence that is appropriate to reflect the overall gravity of the offending but putting to one side aggravating and mitigating factors personal to you.

14 Your offending had several aggravating features. First, it involved deliberate dishonesty that occurred in two different ways and continued over several months. You misled suppliers, including your former employer, by obtaining quotes from them when you knew you were not going to pass on quotes that were lower than that submitted by On Time Print. You then misled your...