An investigator with the Australian Taxation Office has been found to have lied and tampered with evidence during a lengthy legal battle against a Queensland medical researcher who was accused of fraud.

The researcher was interviewed by the ATO, and was advised to answer questions and was told if she did not, she would be committing an offence. She therefore did not have a right to silence.

The ATO’s conduct was lambasted as “oppression” by Justice Paul Smith, who ordered for her fraud case to be stayed on Friday.

Smith handed down his judgment in the years-long case, involving the medical researcher, referred to as Julie Clarke in documents, after she requested a pseudonym.

Clarke had wished to develop a therapeutic using the chemical (R)-3-hydroxybutyric acid (also known as D-3-hydro

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