200 million PLN on fictitious invoices. Key accountant of an international criminal group detained
Officers from the Regional Office of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in Białystok and the Warmia-Mazury Customs and Tax Office in Olsztyn are participating in today's operation against an international organized crime group that deals with issuing false invoices and money laundering.
As part of a joint operation carried out under the supervision of the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw, they are searching over 35 apartments, companies' headquarters, accounting offices in Warsaw, Wólka Kosowska and in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship.
The CBA officers detained, inter alia, the chief accountant of this international group responsible for strategic criminal activities aimed at accounting for the authenticity of a fictitious commodity trading.
Another detainee is a citizen of Vietnam, who in years 2016-2017 was to participate in the so-called money laundering. He withdrew already "laundered" 24 million PLN and 375 thousand EUR from bank accounts of companies under investigation. The list of detainees in this case is not closed.
Detainees will be charged in the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Warsaw regarding money laundering, acting in an organized criminal group as well as criminal and fiscal offenses.
As the investigators from the CBA and the prosecutor's office established - the operations of the liquidated group consisted in issuing unreliable and untrue invoices, and then declaring to the tax authorities untrue information that was supposed to document fictitious trade in goods. The amount of declarations established by the investigators and thus unreliable or untrue VAT invoices may reach 200 million PLN.
The ongoing analyzes of the already secured financial and accounting documentation indicate that these estimates can be even twice as high and amount to 400 million PLN.
Vietnamese traders' companies were involved in the dealings, acquired and managed by Vietnamese nationals so-called "straw-persons" - people who did not have a residence permit or did not stay on Polish territory at all.
The mechanism of placing fictitious VAT invoices on the market was used, among others, to legalize goods of unknown origin, which was sold by final recipients, including at the marketplace in Wólka Kosowska.
The findings made by the CBA and KAS officers indicate that the losses of the State Treasury due to the understatement of tax liabilities in the VAT tax on goods and services amounted to at least 40 million PLN. This amount may also double as the secured financial documentation is still examined.
This is the beginning of the investigation, the case is ongoing.