However, the workers were granted transfer relief.
Their employer, ER Soleman, which runs a barracks rental business, land clearing, charcoal manufacture and sale, as well as commercial cleaning, was disqualified from employing foreign workers in the commonwealth for two years.
Those given transfer relief were Nussawang Pattaya, Ahmen Shuhel, Nur Hossain, Khalequzzaman, Baofang Li, Abdur Rahman, Sudarat Phonsan, Ratree Wisetsa, Ping Xu and Sulyman.
But Labor Hearing Officer Jerry Cody said the petition for administrative transfer submitted by Intakhab SM Alam was denied.
Based on the investigation, Soleman began employing and attempting to employ an increasing number of guest workers as charcoal makers for his charcoal business in early 2008.
Soleman claimed that his charcoal-making business was profitable and that he needed his workers to maintain and increase the capacity of his land clearing and charcoal manufacturing business.
On April 1, 2008, Labor Director Barry Hirshbein denied a number of transfer applications submitted by Soleman on various grounds, including the employer’s failure to comply with a deficiency notice; his income, which did not justify additional hiring; salary records that showed that not all workers were being paid; and his suspected sponsorship scheme.
At the hearing, Hirshbein said Soleman’s wage records “strongly suggest that this business was little more than a sponsorship.”
Labor also discovered some inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the financial report of Soleman’s business gross revenue tax returns as well as his daily cash and expenses receipts.
At the hearing, Soleman produced a number of sale receipt books regarding his charcoal sales but when the labor director extensively cross-examined him, it was revealed that numerous entries in the books were altered.
Some of the figures in Soleman’s receipts were “amplified with the addition of zeroes.”
Soleman admitted under oath that he intentionally falsified the amount of revenue he claimed to have received in an attempt to reduce his tax payments, Cody said.
