An accountant has been charged with misleading The Pensions Regulator after he allegedly failed to enrol staff into a pension.
In the third case brought against an accountant by the regulator, Paul Eugene Rewrie, 58, of Crewkerne in Somerset, is due to appear at Brighton Magistrates Court on January 8.
Mr Rewrie is charged with knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to TPR, an offence under section 80 of the Pensions Act 2004 which carries an unlimited fine at a magistrates court.
If the case is heard in a crown court Mr Rewrie could face an unlimited fine or up to two years in prison if found guilty.
The regulator alleged Mr Rewrie, the sole director of accountancy company PR Finance And Development Ltd, falsely declared staff at a Cambridge-based company had been automatically enrolled into a workplace pension scheme, despite knowing they had not.
All UK employers are required by law to put eligible staff into a pension scheme, known as automatic enrolment because the employer is required to do it without any input from the employee.
Employers are legally required to complete a declaration of compliance when they have automatically enrolled staff into a workplace pension.
TPR has prosecuted accountants on two previous occasions for misleading the regulator over pension enrolment, in a relatively new approach of pursuing third parties working on behalf of an employer for the offence.
In November 2018 an accountant of a London cafe pled guilty to misleading TPR and was ordered to pay £6,857.50 and in February of this year an accounts manager who tried to hide the fact his restaurants had not given their staff workplace pensions was ordered to pay £5,000.
rachel.mortimer@ft.com
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