The former owner of Casa La Pizza in Beloeil, Haci Koskokan, will have to pay hefty fines totaling $173,875 and serve a one-year suspended prison sentence for a series of tax offenses.

The sentence, rendered on June 28 at the Saint-Hyacinthe courthouse, was announced Friday in a press release by Revenu Québec. Mr. Koskokan had pleaded guilty to five counts, while his company, operating as 9379-3792 Quebec Inc., similarly pleaded guilty to six counts.

The scheme, according to Revenu Québec, consisted of using several cash registers in the Casa La Pizza restaurant on Sir-Wilfrid-Laurier Boulevard in Beloeil, to produce invoices for customers. Only one of them, however, was linked to a sales recording module (SRM). “This allowed the company to evade significant amounts of taxes and duties,” says Revenu Québec.

Mr. Koskokan admitted to having filed false tax returns, both for the Quebec sales tax (QST) and for the goods and services tax (GST). He also failed to pay the duties established by the Taxation Act. The company 9379-3792 Quebec inc. is pinned for not having given a customer an invoice containing the mandatory information and produced by means of a sales recording module.

Revenu Québec estimates that the company managing Casa La Pizza filed nine false or misleading tax returns between July 2018 and September 2020. It did not remit QST and GST amounts estimated at $50,191.16 and $25,171.67, respectively. He is also accused of not having paid an amount of taxes of $28,932 and did not file a tax return of $251,582 in 2020.

Casa La Pizza no longer belongs to Mr. Koskokan, which has been impossible to trace. Reached by phone, the new owner of the establishment for four months told La Presse that he did not know Mr. Koskokan and had “changed a lot of things”, including the menus, since its acquisition.