New Zealand's biggest-ever tax fraudster will remain in prison, despite tearfully begging in court to be let out.

The Court of Appeal today rejected his appeal on conviction and sentence, labelling some of his appeal points as "nonsense and completely unsound".

Matawai farmer John Richard Bracken, who fleeced IRD for $17.3 million, appealed against his conviction and sentence last month.

Bracken has been in prison for one year out of his eight-and-a-half-year sentence, imposed after he was found guilty at judge-alone trial of 39 charges of dishonestly using a document to obtain a financial advantage.

Each of the charges represented a GST period between August 2014 and July 2018, and related to an exporting arm of Bracken Enterprises Limited (BEL) - not his Matawai farming operation, which it was accepted was being run legitimately.

Much of Bracken's arguments in the Court of Appeal centred on the concept he was not subject to the process of criminal law. He started his address to the court announcing he was a man, not a person, and that a person was a fictional being.

But in the decision released today, the panel of judges were quick to dismiss the argument.

"The arguments Mr Bracken recited are made before the court from time to time. They are a nonsense and completely unsound. They have no meaning or effect at law."

His other points of appeal included that he held a genuine belief he was doing business the way he was advised to and that he was using the documents correctly.

He also argued that a number of months passed between the Serious Fraud Office (SFO),
Inland Revenue Department (IRD) and the Asset Recovery Unit suspecting something was wrong, yet no steps were taken to "correct" his thinking.

Among his other appeal points were references to the judge not recusing himself when asked to, Bracken's name being used on documents without his consent, and a challenge to disclosure and a complaint that original documents were not produced.

He also submitted IRD could not be a victim because it is an agency, not a person.

The court's decision rejected his appeals, saying some of them were "frivolous and vexatious", and that the evidence against him was overwhelming.

The obligation was on Bracken not to commit fraud and he could not have genuinely believed he was acting lawfully, it said.

"Mr Bracken also complained that the trial judge had interrupted him and prevented him asking the witnesses what he had wanted to ask. We have reviewed the transcript. The interruptions were moderate and necessary.

"The Judge was obliged to ensure evidence and questions were relevant to the issues in the case to ensure a fair trial process. He was not obliged to allow Mr Bracken to ask irrelevant questions."

While Bracken made submissions against his sentence, none of them related to matters of law, instead pointing out how he had cried every night while in prison and how he was abused by other inmates.

As there was no error in the way the trial judge handled the sentencing, the appeal against sentence could not succeed. In fact, the Court of Appeal found the judge could be seen as "merciful" for not imposing a longer non-parole period.

The offending

Bracken's scam involved him claiming GST refunds by falsely purporting he had exported products received from New Zealand suppliers. It enabled him to claim input tax on product he never received and to evade payment of output tax.

To support those false sales, he regularly conducted circular banking transactions. The transactions involved same-day withdrawals and deposits of large sums of money in the form of either bank cheques or cash, and were always in person and only ever at physical branches of the ANZ - usually Takanini, where he befriended a bank teller — the first of two women he paid to generate false invoices.

The other woman claimed to be his lover and took over creating the invoices during 2016. It was her who called the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) during 2017, when a friend of Bracken's alerted her to the possibility the invoices were illegal.

The invoices were based on copies Bracken obtained through legitimate trading or in the majority of cases, pro forma invoices he received through initial inquiries from suppliers of various export-type products - bottled water, milk, logs, plywood, honey and the like.

At trial, it was accepted Bracken legitimately exported goods to the Pacific — mainly plywood and timber - but it was at nowhere near the level he purported for the purposes of his scam.

During the offence period, Bracken claimed to have entered into transactions totalling about $133m, which enabled the $17.3m refunds.

New Zealand Customs records show goods he actually exported amounted to about $478,000 and even taking account of products he exported as part of shared freight consignments with other companies, it was still a far cry from the level he purported.