According to a note published by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Porto district, a company based in Vale de Cambra, its main directors and more than 30 other defendants – including “diverse partner companies” – have allegedly committed crimes of aggravated fiscal fraud, tax evasion and subsidy fraud “in a scheme that defrauded the state and the European Union of substantial sums between 2014 and 2017”, the total of which came to €1.601.309,53 million.
Prosecutors maintain that “the defendants devised a plan to misappropriate EU funds” by “using fictitious and cross-invoices with companies within the same group and/ or suppliers.”
The invoices “related to non-existent or overvalued transactions, enabling the company to declare fictitious eligible investments in order to obtain financial incentives and undue VAT refunds.”
Essentially, the indictment claims that “the defendants used the company’s structure to cover strictly personal expenses”, namely renovation work on private homes, the purchase of luxury goods, the payment of hundreds of restaurant meals, and the payment of tourism and leisure trips for directors and their families to destinations such as the Maldives, Brazil, Sweden and Turkey, “falsely presenting them as business trips”.
It also suggests that payments were made to ‘company staff’ – such as cooks and caretakers – who were, in reality, providing services in the private homes of the defendants concerned.
Reports in the media today suggest that those accused have already proceeded with “the voluntary settlement of a large proportion of the tax offences, repaying the amounts of incentives they misappropriated, plus interest.”
Source material: https://pgreg-porto.ministeriopublico.pt/noticiasdocentro.pt
