Eight of the 14 defendants detained in the European mega-operation against fraud were released this week, after the Public Ministry did not promote the adoption of coercive measures of deprivation of liberty in the Criminal Investigation Court of Porto.
A source close to the process explained to Lusa that preventive detention was not requested for these eight defendants, since the risks associated with these detainees could be contained with less serious coercive measures and without depriving people of their liberty.
On the contrary, the remaining six defendants continue to be detained, being at stake the alleged practice of the crimes of criminal association, tax evasion and money laundering.
The reading of the decision of the investigating judge on the coercive measures of the 14 defendants is scheduled for Tuesday.
The investigation into the fraudulent activity that embodied Operation Admiral was coordinated by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and originated in Portugal, where it was responsible for tens of millions of euros of fraud.
The police operation in national territory was in charge of the Judicial Police (PJ), in which some 250 elements from various departments participated, 35 elements from the Tax Authority, as well as a judicial magistrate, a European prosecutor and two Portuguese European delegate prosecutors. .
“There was also the judicial seizure of some 50 vehicles, 47 properties and some 600 national bank accounts,” the PJ stressed in a statement, in which it noted that the operation is centralized in the North Directorate, being owned by the European Prosecutor’s Office, in Collaboration with the Tax Authority.
Criminal activities cover all 22 EPPO Member States plus Hungary, Ireland, Sweden and Poland, along with third countries such as Albania, China, Mauritius, Serbia, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The EPPO information points to a global VAT fraud of 2.2 billion euros and an operation triggered in 14 Member States (Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania , Slovakia and Spain). As part of this investigation, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Sweden were also searched last October.
The EPPO also said that the investigation at the European level lasted around a year and a half and would have exposed “the biggest carousel fraud in terms of VAT” in the European Union, allowing to establish “links between the suspected company in Portugal and around 9,000 other legal persons, and more than 600 natural persons located in different countries”.
The criminal activity involved the successive constitution of a complex chain of companies, most of them selling computer equipment on online platforms, which operated by performing the necessary acts to “get rich” with the amounts of VAT received from the sale of these products to end customers, in a typical scheme of the ‘Missing Trader Intra-Community Fraud (MTIC)’, which damages the coffers of the European Union, explained the PJ.
Source: Observadora
