Romanian state budget loses EUR 2.5 mln via fictional commercial deliveries

Anti-fraud (ANAF) inspectors have identified a company that caused a loss of RON 11.600.000 (EUR 2.5 million) between 2016-2017 to the Romanian state budget.

The fraud was done through fictional intra-communitary deliveries with electronic products and accessories with a total value of RON 58.4 million, being the penultimate link of a complex commercial chain made up of commercial firms registered in Italy, Malta, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Poland and Bulgaria.

The goods were imported from China by companies in Italy, then they would be exported to a Swiss company with hidden stakeholders. The Swiss firm had the import of goods to Romania through border procedures on the books, as well as putting the goods into free circulation without paying VAT upon import, by declaring an intracommunitary VAT-free delivery to another EU member state.

For these border operations, the Swiss company used border commissioners from Germany and Austria, who also acted as fiscal representatives on these countries’ territories, in order for the Swiss firm to justify the intracommunitary, VAT-free deliveries towards various “missing trader” firms from Spain, Poland and Portugal, with the purpose of avoiding the payment of VAT.

The particularity of these firms was that they would change their ownership structures and afterwards not submit any fiscal documents, have no registered office, no shares, and they would later on be declared fiscally inactive and their registration would be cancelled for VAT reasons in their state.

From the transport documents however, it was discovered that in all situations the goods had been unloaded directly into four logistic warehouses in Spain, having never been delivered to Romania.