CBA: International organized criminal group dissolved. 187 million PLN VAT stays in the state budget
Officers from the CBA Regional Office in Białystok detained members of an international organized criminal group specializing in large-scale VAT extortions. The extortion of at least 187 million PLN from the State Treasury was thwarted.
The Regional Office of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in Białystok conducts, under the supervision of the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, an investigation regarding an organized, international criminal group operating in Poland, the Czech Republic and Germany. The group operated from September 2015 to May 2016. Through a series of related entities and the so-called tax carousel, the group tried to extort at least 187 million PLN of VAT tax.
The task of CBA agents from Białystok was to identify, track down and detain members of the group's top management.
In implementing the arrangements, officers from the Regional Office of the CBA in Białystok detained in Częstochowa and in Silesia three people constituting the core of this international organized criminal group.
The CBA agents searched the suspects' places of residence, as well as other places related to the subject of the investigation, securing data carriers and documentation.
Detainees caught by the CBA were taken to the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, where they will hear charges.
In the course of the investigation it was established that the companies, through a series of fictitious international transactions documented with invoices, authenticated the trade in goods: batteries, coffee, sweets or other food products. Part of the carousel transaction chain was the so-called "straw entities", i.e. entities which after a number of transactions were liquidated. The appearance of legal activity was created. Entities operating within the "tax carousel" had thus the basis for applying for VAT refund for making (fictitious) intra-community supplies of goods - they wanted to extort the refund of 187 million PLN of VAT, at the expense of the state budget.
It cannot be ruled out that the list of detainees by the CBA will extend - the investigators are still working on the collected evidence.
