Index – National – Billions of fraudulent VAT on perfumes and food supplements

Recently, the National Tax and Customs Office (NAV) has liquidated a large trans-Danubian criminal organization specializing in so-called carousel fraud. More than 150 detectives and patrols took part in the action, crushing criminals in a total of three countries in fifty locations at once and capturing twenty people.

In addition to the Hungarian authorities, Eurojust and Europol also supported the action, announced NAV on its Facebook page. As reported in the social media entry, the criminal gang unjustifiably recovered more than three billion guilders from VAT through established billing chains.

The criminal organization operated a major billing chain through which perfumes and food supplements were “traveled” between Hungary and Slovakia, and between Hungary and the Czech Republic. The products reached the profitable brokerages through fictitious internal sales of alternate bankrupt companies, which sold them to companies registered in the band’s territory. However, the goods were never traded as soon as they reached the destination country, they were returned to Hungary with false documents to go through the chain again and again, so that the already mentioned more than three billion VAT guilders could be recovered without being entered into the budget.

Unauthorized machine gun ammunition was also found in the network manager. A member of the criminal organization tried to hide from the authorities, but the investigators arrested him within hours and detained him. In addition, abundant perfume was found in the criminal organization’s warehouse, as well as poorly stored food supplements contaminated with animal feces and the necessary equipment to repack them.

In addition to the multi-million dollar fraud, investigators seized large amounts of cash from members of the organization, as well as bank accounts, stocks, patents, vehicles, and real estate, forcing more than 1 billion guilders.