Julie Bohannan, the wife of Bathurst Resources former chief executive Hamish Bohannan, has been sentenced to nine months' jail in Western Australia, after pleading guilty to defrauding welfare agency Centrelink of more than $A65,000 ($NZ71,600).
Mrs Bohannan (42) claimed the more than $65,000 in fraudulent payments up until 2009, despite her husband earning nearly $3.8 million in the preceding five years - a fraud Commonwealth prosecutors said was motivated by ''greed not need'', The West Australian newspaper reported yesterday.
Bathurst Resources is developing a coal mine near Westport but in a cost saving measure its senior management ranks were gutted, and Mr Bohannan resigned in late March.
The newspaper said Mrs Bohannan's lawyers had asked the Perth District Court for a merciful sentence, pointing out the debt had been paid more than four years before she was charged with the offences - and outlining her eldest daughter's severe intellectual disability.
However, Judge Andrew Stavrianou said the frauds were planned and deliberate, and therefore an immediate prison term was required to punish and send a message to the community.
''You were not forthright, you were not truthful and you were deceitful,''Judge Stavrianou said.
The Bohannans married in 2006, the year after he made just over $1.8 million in taxable income.
The newspaper reported the Perth District Court was told that for years afterwards she claimed benefit payments under another name, consistently lying to Centrelink about where she was living, to whom she was married and what they were worth.
