Even 1 billion zlotys of not-extorted VAT remained in the budget. Another person involved in the activities of an organized international criminal group detained
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, Czech Republic and Germany.
The multithreaded investigation is the result of a combination of preparatory proceedings conducted, among others, by the CBA Regional Office in Białystok. In this case, in December 2017, officers of the CBA Regional Office in Białystok detained 3 persons - members of the group's top management, including citizens of Armenia and Belarus, while in February 2018 one of the so-called "investors" who put out financial resources to start the group's activity, and then derive financial benefits from it. In the implementation of the case, the CBA cooperated with the National Tax Administration.
The findings indicate, that through a series of related entities and the so-called tax carousel the offenders attempted to extort from the state budget at least 900 million zł of undue refund of tax on goods and services (VAT tax). The group was to operate from September 2015 to May 2016. Further estimates are ongoing, this amount may be much higher.
On 08.01.2019, officers of the Regional Office of the Central Anticorruption Bureau in Białystok detained another person involved in the dealings in Warsaw. The detained man is a Polish citizen, a proxy of one of the Czech companies.
Already earlier in the course of the investigation it was established, that the group's activities consisted, among others, in a fictitious trade in goods between Poland, Germany, Czech Republic and Slovakia. The trade concerned, among others, food products, including coffee, sweets, but also batteries, razors and cosmetics. The appearance of legal activity was created. A number of fictitious international transactions were documented with numerous invoices. Part of the carousel transaction chain was the so-called straw entities, i.e. entities that were liquidated after the transaction.
The list of suspects and detainees caught by the Central Anticorruption Bureau may be significantly extended - investigators are still working on the collected evidence.
