The Podkarpacie scandal - continuation. 7 detainees. In the background money laundering in tax haven and "panama papers"
For 22 million zł, PGE Reneweable Energy company bought a non-operating heat and power plant in Rzeszów in 2010.
The Regional Office of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in Rzeszów, under the supervision of the Silesian Terrain Division of the Department for Organized Crime and Corruption of the National Public Prosecutor's Office in Katowice, conducts an investigation regarding the so-called the Podkarpackie scandal.
One of the threads of the investigation is the transaction of purchase by a state-owned energy company belonging to the PGE Group of a non-operating heat and power plant in the Podkarpacie region.
Today, the CBA agents have detained four former members of the management board of PGE Renewable Energy company, including the former president and the former director of the PGE Renewable Energy department, a property appraiser and the president of the management board of the E. company from the energy sector.
The detentions took place in Poznań, near Bydgoszcz, in Warsaw and in Szczecin.
Persons detained by the CBA will be brought to the prosecutor's office where they will hear allegations regarding damage to property in large sizes.
The heat and power plant was located in the buildings of the old "Przeworsk Sugar Factory" and was supposed to produce ecological energy. Its owner became a few years earlier a private company, which bought buildings for about 2.5 million zł. In 2010, PGE Renewable Energy company acquired EC Przeworsk enterprise for almost nine times more - 22 million zł.
The CBA findings indicate that the transaction did not have any economic basis. The purchased power generator was end-of-use and there was no possibility of supplying heat either. The city was not interested in purchasing heat from the Przeworsk Heat and Power Plant. Since the purchase, the machines have not been used, and their value immediately after the purchase was estimated as the value of scrap metal.
Another thread of the investigation: after receiving by the company E. 22 million zł, the president siphoned from it about 6 million zł through apparent contracts. As the agents of the CBA established, there were transactions supported entirely by fictitious invoices issued by an offshore company registered in Gibraltar. The company's address appeared in the disclosed materials regarding the so-called "Panama papers", as an address also for many other companies, which dealt with "money laundering". The managing director of the company, a resident of Dubai, appears in publicly available publications regarding the panama papers and money laundering.
The materials gathered in the investigation show that this company from the tax haven did not perform any work or services related to the renovation or sale of the Przeworsk Heat and Power Plant, but it was paid for it. Nearly 1.4 million EUR were transferred to the account of Gibraltar company. The money was partly disbursed in cash in the short-term, and partly went to the accounts of other foreign companies.
The subject of the proceeding was also the matter of issuing attesting the untruth valuations and appraisal reports of EC Przeworsk company by expert appraisers.
The investigation is ongoing, subsequent persons may obtain the status of a suspect.