Telecommunications entrepreneur Al Hee is asking that his seven federal tax convictions be vacated and he be granted a new trial because, he says, Internal Revenue Service investigators misled him about the nature of their inquiry into the finances of his companies.

Lawyers for Hee also filed a separate motion for an outright acquittal on the tax charges, alleging the prosecution never proved that Hee had any criminal intend to evade taxes. Hee’s defense team made similar arguments twice during his trial, but those arguments were rejected.

Hee, 61, was convicted July 13 in federal court in Honolulu of six counts of filing false income tax returns and one count that he corruptly impeded the IRS from correctly calculating and collecting his taxes, offenses that could draw prison terms of up to three years on each count.

Those federal tax charges involved expenses claimed by Waimana Enterprises Inc., a company Hee founded in 1988. Waimana is the parent company of Sandwich Isles Communications, which provides telecommunications services to more than 3,000 customers on Hawaiian homelands.

Hee was convicted of concealing from the IRS that Waimana deducted $2.75 million as business expenses that it had paid to cover Hee’s personal expenses. Hee was also convicted of filing false federal tax returns because he failed to list those payments as personal income.

Among the supposed business expenses cited by prosecutors were $718,559 the company paid for college tuition and living expenses for Hee’s three children, $92,000 in payments for massages for Hee and $121,878 in credit card charges made by Hee for personal expenses, according to the federal indictment.

The indictment also listed $722,550 in payments by Waimana as wages to Hee’s children, who the indictment alleged actually did little or no work for the company. The indictment also alleged Waimana claimed as wages $590,201 that was paid to Hee’s wife, when she allegedly did no work for the company.

According to the motion for a new trial filed Aug. 26 by Hee’s lawyers, the inquiry that led to Hee’s indictment began with a civil tax audit of companies affiliated with Hee, including Waimana.

The IRS is not permitted to use a civil audit as a pretext for developing a criminal investigation, according to the filing. Lawyers for Hee claim that internal emails show IRS officials “unquestionably” had decided to refer the case for criminal charges by Aug. 5, 2009, yet an IRS agent continued to collect evidence as part of the civil audit in the following weeks.

The filing by Hee’s lawyers alleges the agency intentionally misled Waimana into thinking the civil audit was continuing, which violated Hee’s constitutional rights. IRS criminal investigators finally accepted the case as a criminal investigation Oct. 30, 2009, according to the filing.

The motions for acquittal and for a new trial are scheduled for a hearing Oct. 5 before Judge Susan Oki Mollway.