Neha Sharma appeared to be an honest, hard-working property manager at Oranga Tamariki. Her husband ran a construction company. No-one knew about their marriage until after they’d conned the Government agency out of more than $2 million. National crime correspondent Sam Sherwood reports.

Roughly eight months after Christchurch-based construction company Divine Connection was added to Oranga Tamariki’s list of contractors questions began to emerge about the quality of its paperwork.

Invoices that had been approved and paid to the company did not contain all the required information.

The issue was flagged with Neha Sharma, the property and facilities manager at Oranga Tamariki.

Unbeknown to her colleagues, Sharma had been living a double life. To colleagues, she was a trusted government employee. She was also the wife of Divine Connection’s director – a serious conflict of interest that she’d kept concealed as she approved the company’s invoices, got him jobs that could have been carried out by other companies, and even carried out work for the company during office hours.

Shortly after the concern regarding the invoices was raised with her, she messaged her husband.

He said they could provide more detailed information and reminded her she could tell if it needed more as she approved them.

Neha Sharma told him there was no need to get worked up and tried to ease his concerns.

“We have a robust plan in place … and I will support you for becoming an entrepreneur. Celebrate retiring below 35! Not many get this opportunity.”

In late March 2023, the Serious Fraud Office raided the couple’s property, putting an end to their hopes of an early retirement. An investigation revealed the couple had obtained more than $2 million from Oranga Tamariki.

Earlier this month, Neha Sharma was jailed for three years after pleading guilty to a series of charges including obtaining by deception, money laundering and using a forged document.

However, media were unable to report on her pleas until Friday when her husband, Amandeep Sharma, pleaded guilty to obtaining by deception and money laundering.

With the guilty pleas, RNZ can now reveal the full story behind their fraudulent scheme.

Christchurch District Court Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon

The job

For five years Neha Sharma worked at the Ministry of Education, finishing in February 2021 as the assistant delivery manager.

She then started a job at Oranga Tamariki as the Property and Facilities Manager.

As part of her job application, she provided two referees who worked at the Ministry of Education. Written references were provided from what appeared to be their personal email addresses.

The references were actually forged by Neha Sharma, and the email accounts were not theirs.

As part of her employment agreement, Sharma signed a code of conduct. The document referred to conflicts of interest.

“A conflict of interest is a situation where our personal or professional interests may conflict with our role, obligations or responsibilities within Oranga Tamariki, or with the broader role, obligations or responsibilities of Oranga Tamariki.

“Sometimes the appearance or perception of such a conflict of interest can be just as damaging to our reputation, and/or your ability to perform the role for which you are employed, as an actual conflict.”

Anyone who was considering other paid work, business activity or service, was expected to disclose this prior to starting in another role.

“By being open and honest as soon as we see a potential conflict of interest, a conversation can be held, and any necessary steps put into place, to ensure it doesn’t become a problem.”

Photo: RNZ

The divine connection

Divine Connection Limited was incorporated in February 2018 and registered to the couple’s address in Christchurch.

Amandeep Sharma was listed as the director and shareholder.

As part of her role at OT, Neha Sharma was responsible for managing all the property aspects relating to properties in the Canterbury region.

Her work included organising contractors to do the maintenance and upkeep of the properties, overseeing the work through OT’s job management system, LogIT.

In her role it was possible for Neha Sharma to contact the National Accounting Centre and get them to add a new contractor to the system.

Approved suppliers were given priority for any work that needed to be allocated. Other contractors would only be hired if the approved suppliers weren’t available.

On July 8, 2021, she contacted a Facilities Management Officer (FMO) to arrange for Divine Connection to be set up on the LogIT system.

She provided Amandeep Sharma’s name, the business’ email address, a phone number and what the company’s rates were.

She then messaged her husband telling him he would soon be getting an email.

The email listed the terms and conditions for using LogIT and advised him he would not be able to access it without accepting the conditions.

Amandeep Sharma asked her if it was OK. She replied it was and that she would reply to the email from the company email account.

About half an hour later Neha messaged her husband to say she “needs treat of $200 on BNZ account for setting you up on system. Now I can assign jobs to you”. Despite being added, the company was not an approved supplier.

The summary of facts says that an important role for Amandeep Sharma, as well as doing the physical work, was “to continue the facade of independence from Mrs Sharma”.

Two days after the company was added to LogIT, the pair messaged about work at one of the properties.

Neha told Amandeep: “you just say you are working for me. He should not know you are my husband… will be huge issue for me”.

On 22 July, 2021, a project manager from a company that did work for OT asked Neha Sharma for a conflict of interest form because his wife worked for another company that was doing work for OT at the time.

“Even though there isn’t really one [a conflict of interest], it’s more about what could be perceived, and best to be upfront about it all,” the man said.

Sharma then emailed a colleague for a copy of the conflict of interest form saying the connection between the man and his wife “could be seen as a potential conflict”.

On the same day Divine Connection received its first payment from OT for a job completed at a property in Christchurch.

Sharma was able to ensure Divine Connection was assigned work by either excluding the FMOs from the allocation process and assigning the work herself, or by contacting them and directly asking them to do it.

In October 2021, OT’s Ministry of Social Development call-centre changed and a decision was made that calls relating to OT homes would go to a call-centre based in each region. Vacancies were then listed for locally based FMOs to assign the work.

Sharma got a job for a friend of hers in the Christchurch call centre. She then used the friend to watch the jobs coming in and assign work to Divine Connection. The friend left her job in mid-February 2022.

Of the 203 jobs recorded as being assigned to Divine Connection in LogIT 91 were created by Sharma herself, 64 were created by the helpdesk and 20 were created by the friend. The remainder appeared to have been created by other FMOs.

While working at OT, Neha Sharma was also involved in the running of Divine Connection. On one occasion she sent Divine Connection invoices to OT for payment during her work hours.

Neha Sharma was the budget manager for the properties that Divine Connection worked for and was therefore able to authorise all the invoices.

One of the invoices included a new television that had been purchased for her own home, rather than an OT home.

Other invoices were approved and paid to Divine Connection by Sharma despite her knowing there had been a markup of more than 150 percent.

In total, OT made 103 payments to Divine Connection between July 22 2021 and October 28 2022. The payments were made in relation to 326 invoices.

The total of these payments was $2.1m.

The resignation

On 26 October, 2022, an FMO at OT sent an email to a facilities team manager and another FMO about Neha Sharma not following standard practice and allocating jobs to Divine Connection.

That same day one of the FMOs emailed the other saying Sharma was allocating jobs to Divine Connection despite raising in a previous meeting that under no circumstances should OT stray from its contract to allocate work to City Care.

The next week, Sharma texted her husband to say she had a meeting with her immediate manager regarding the concerns.

The following day she asked her manager if everything was OK with the FMO who had complained, and whether there was still a need for a meeting.

November 2, 2022 was fairly eventful.

At 8.40am, Sharma received a notification she had a meeting on Teams for the following day. The meeting would relate to concerns she had issued jobs and approved works and invoices associated with Divine Connection. There was more – they had worked out the company appeared to be registered to her home address.

An hour later Sharma sent her resignation to her manager and two others.

She claimed she had been “targeted” and was not given support from her manager when she raised concerns.

“I have been pushed to think that there was an agenda behind this, and I cannot stress or exert myself any more on this.”

She then declined the calendar invite to her meeting.

About 20 minutes after she quit Amandeep Sharma was removed as a director on the Companies Office website and replaced by a man Prince Bajaj. The company’s registered address was also changed.

The following month, Amandeep Sharma was removed as a shareholder and replaced by Bajaj.

The raids

After leaving OT, Neha Sharma got a job as regional delivery advisor at the New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) Waka Kotahi, starting on 12 December, 2022.

She again used the name of a former colleague at the Ministry of Education as a referee.

However, when she tried logging into the email address, she had used to send the reference for her job at OT she could not sign in.

She then created another email address using the man’s name again. The phone number she gave for the referee was actually her husband’s.

She then submitted an online reference through NZTA’s system.

On 25 November, Neha Sharma received a call from NZTA. Two minutes after the call she texted her husband to say he was about to get a call, but not to answer.

On 30 March, the Serious Fraud Office came knocking on the couple’s door.

At the time of the raids the couple owned three properties and three cars. They also had about $800,000 in cash in their joint bank accounts.

Neha Sharma told one of the SFO staffers that Divine Connection was set up as a provider before she joined, and that she had disclosed a conflict of interest to the procurement team at OT. She claimed she signed a document regarding the conflict but was told not to worry as Divine Connection was a small company.

Amandeep Sharma claimed to the SFO that the couple had sold the company to Bajaj.

However, when the SFO went to Bajaj’s address he said the company belonged to Amandeep and he was unaware he had been listed as the director and shareholder and said it was done without his consent.

There were no records of the couple receiving any money from Bajaj in relation to any sale.

Less than two weeks after the SFO knocked on their front door, the couple booked two one-way tickets flying business class on Singapore Airlines to Chennai, India.

The trip seemed strange since the couple had a busy schedule ahead in Christchurch including a pregnancy and parenting education course and Amandeep had two trips booked to Auckland. Neha had also bought two tickets for a baby expo.

They boarded their flight on 14 April, with 80kg worth of luggage between them. Before leaving they attempted to liquidate their properties and cars and transferred just under $800,000 in cash from their bank accounts to accounts held in India.

The High Court made restraining orders in relation to the properties and sale proceeds.

The SFO investigation revealed the concealed funds that were transferred from Amandeep’s Bank of India account to seven other bank accounts based in India.

Baby brain blamed

Neha Sharma was jailed in the High Court at Christchurch earlier this month for three years. Through her lawyer she blamed the offending on baby brain.

The Crown said there was no evidence of remorse or offer of reparation.

Neha’s lawyer said she was in prison with her baby and would be in the mothers’ and babies’ unit.

The couple’s older child had been taken back to India with Amandeep’s sister.

On Friday, Amandeep Sharma pleaded guilty. He will be sentenced in June.

Agencies reply

Andrew Bridgman Photo: RNZ / REECE BAKER

Oranga Tamariki chief executive Andrew Bridgman said, in a statement, the organisation welcomed the convictions.

“These convictions reinforce the serious consequences for abuse of trust for personal gain when dealing with public funds”.

As soon as concerns were raised by Oranga Tamariki in November 2022, an internal investigation was undertaken and then the case was referred to the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) resulting in this prosecution, Bridgman said.

“The public rightly expect all government agencies and public servants to act with the highest level of integrity to maintain public trust in the services that we provide.

“Corruption of this kind is utterly unacceptable. Oranga Tamariki takes any case of fraud extremely seriously as evidenced by its actions when concerns about this staff member’s activities were raised.”

Oranga Tamariki has reviewed relevant systems, policies and procedures and implemented recommendations to help guard against this happening again.

“It has strengthened internal control measures to harden the organisation against fraud, increased training in fraud awareness, and improved corporate policies, systems, and procedures.

“Oranga Tamariki has new governance requirements to enhance oversight, review, reporting, and accountability mechanisms across specific functions and bolstered its onboarding and vetting processes for new staff.”

Due diligence requirements had been updated for new suppliers and the system for managing conflicts of interest has been enhanced to align to public sector best practice.

“I am confident that the vast majority of people who work at Oranga Tamariki carry out their jobs with the highest integrity but this is a timely reminder that nothing can be taken for granted and there will occasionally be people who let us down.

“The integrity of all government agencies is critical to our success.”

Ministry of Education’s acting corporate leader Rob Campbell said in a statement the recruitment process for Sharma was managed by an external recruitment agency.

“Following advice from Oranga Tamariki regarding their investigation, the Ministry conducted an internal audit. That review found no evidence of financial fraud committed by the individual during their employment with us.”

SFO director Karen Chang said the convictions marked an “important milestone” in the SFO’s prosecution of the case, which reinforced “the serious consequences of abusing a position of trust for personal gain, especially when public funds are involved”.

“Offending of this kind erodes public confidence and harms the integrity of New Zealand’s public institutions and our reputation as a safe place to invest. It’s critical we take action to disrupt and deter such behaviour. This case also highlights the requirement for rigorous vetting of public servants, especially as they move between agencies.”

Chang acknowledged the police and Indian authorities for their “swift action and assistance” in securing the defendants’ assets, as well as the co-operation of Oranga Tamariki and Waka Kotahi in the investigation.

Source: RNZ