The criminal court in French Polynesia has given a six-year jail sentence to the man accused in what is being described as one of the territory's cases of tax fraud.
Thierry Pageau has also been fined $US 1 million and banned from running a business for life for defrauding the authorities with fake transactions to benefit from a French tax refund law.
A total of 13 people were tried over the fraud.
Photo: 123RF
Among those convicted is a former minister Clarenntz Vernaudon, who has been given a three-year prison term of which 18 months are suspended.
Two months ago he received a suspended jail sentence for abusing public funds.
Between 2005 and 2010, hundreds of the questionable transactions were carried out through an operation run by Pageau, netting about $US20 million in refunds.
In 2011, he spent nine months in prison while the matter was being investigated.
Last year, he was jailed again for three years for drug dealing and violence against a minor.
