Revenue and PF take action against luxury import fraud
Source: Estadão, 14/07/2009
Investigation shows that the São Paulo business group benefited from a purchase under-invoicing schemeSÃO PAULO - The Federal Revenue of Brazil, together with the Federal Police and the Federal Public Ministry, started this Tuesday, 14, Operation Porto Europa, which seeks to apprehend evidence of a fraudulent scheme to import luxury goods, created to benefit a certain São Paulo business group.
According to the IRS, the warrants, issued by the Federal Court of São Paulo-SP, cover the stores and homes of the scheme's beneficiaries, as well as the accounting offices. After a year of investigation, it was found that the alleged criminal organization committed, in the years 2004, 2005 and 2006, actions of fraudulent interposition (oranges) and under-invoicing in imports, in addition to crimes such as embezzlement, tax evasion and ideological falsehood.
The scheme consisted of replacing, in the import documents, the real importer and the real suppliers, respectively, by Brazilian trading companies and by "front" exporting companies, headquartered in Miami, in the United States. In this way, the group was able to hide from the IRS both the real beneficiaries (acquirers) and the real values transacted in the operation.
Also according to the agency, there were two “facade” exporters based at the same address in Miami. While the first simulated an acquisition of the real suppliers, mainly based in Europe, the second was in charge of sending the same goods to Brazil with values corresponding, on average, to 30% of the original values. The false commercial invoices were presented to the servers of the Federal Revenue in the import procedures.
The entry of thousands of dollars in finished goods, without the due collection of taxes applied to foreign trade, in addition to losses to public coffers, and the loss of countless jobs, causes an incentive to “unfair competition”. Such practice brings serious damage to the industrial park installed in the country, in view of the difficulties in competing with companies that, due to the frauds practiced, manage to place their products on the market at a more competitive price.