Authorities: also large companies in Estonia use invoicing scams

Authorities claim that economic depression has forced many large companies to use so-called invoicing scams.

Rain Kuus, head of the investigation department of the Estonian Tax Board MTA, told Eesti Päevaleht writes that most large companies that are using invoicing scams have good lawyers and well-honed mechanisms where they order bogus invoices, pay them and are paid cash in return which they can use for paying wages without social tax.

Kuus says that in one case a lawyer representing a company accused of using bogus invoicing claimed that since the scam damaged only the state, there is no real victim and the whole case should be annulled.

In the first half MTA’s investigating department sent to the prosecutors 18 criminal cases involving taxes with a total estimated damage of EEK 67 million kroons. It has also seized 19 million kroons in assets from the suspects.

Last year the department submitted to the prosecutors 59 criminal cases with tax-related crime and a total damage of 248 million for the state. The biggest damage was done by one company in Tartu that has swindled 22 million kroons in this way.

A representative of MTA refused to say which large companies are using bogus invoicing, but said that some of them have set up their own bogus invoice companies.

A few years ago the authorities closed a company that had been issuing bogus invoices and had about 450 business customers, mostly forestry companies, construction companies, metal traders, real estate agencies and fuel retailers.

Source: BBN