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The Financial Crimes Investigation Service (FNTT) reported Wednesday that energy businessman Rimandas Stonis and four others had been charged with large-scale VAT fraud and fraudulent accounting.
According to the FNTT, in the last seven months, a group of accomplices is suspected of reducing the value added and excise taxes on sales of more than 1.1 million LTL to a Lithuanian-registered energy company that markets petroleum products. was able to carry out a criminal plan, imitating oil purchase and sale transactions between five Lithuanian and foreign companies, which, according to the investigation data, do not carry out any activity.
In total, 85 officers from the FNTT units, the police and the Public Security Service carried out more than 30 searches in Kaunas, Klaipėda and Vilnius, and seized various items and documents relevant to the investigation.
The investigation also restricted the assets of companies and individuals to secure a possible civil action.
According to the service, the complaints have been made and, it is believed, the organizer of this activity, who has previously been convicted of economic crimes 13 times. According to the portal kauno.diena.lt, it is about the famous financial scam Mindaugas Žalimas.
According to the FNTT, the alleged organizer of the fraud scheme has been known since 1994 for similar crimes against law enforcement agencies. He has been convicted several times in the past for large-scale VAT fraud in the fuel, metal, wood and building materials trade, and has spent several years in prisons as a result.
In recent years, according to the FNTT, crimes have been committed in the trade in petroleum products.
“The court, when pleading guilty, already declared in 2011 that the commission of similar crimes has become an integral part of the suspect’s way of life and source of livelihood. Currently, the FNTT is conducting three more preliminary investigations for crimes serious against the public finance system involving this person, and several more cases are pending in court, “the service said in a statement.
As we wrote in 2017, M. Žalimas for fraudulent use of false invoices and 53 thousand. He was sentenced in Akmenė District Court to four years of probation.
This was the thirteenth conviction of M. Žalimas: in 2011, the Klaipėda District Court sentenced him to 11 years and six months in prison for fraud, falsification of documents, illegal activities of a legal person and attempted illegal activity and ordered him pay nearly 2 million LTL to the state. that he misappropriated without paying VAT.
Subsequently, this sentence was reduced by the Lithuanian Court of Appeal for five years, for which M. Žalimas returned to freedom in 2016.
R. Stonys is the owner of Kaunas Cogeneration Power Plant (KHPP), previously controlled the Dujotekana company, she was one of the largest gas importers of the Russian company Gazprom in Lithuania.
Rimandas Stonys / A. Photo by Aleksandravičius.
According to data from TOP magazine, the value of R. Stonis’ property in 2019 amounted to 70 million. euros.
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