Greece’s financial police on Friday said they had arrested the owner of an Aspropyrgos-based recycling company and his daughter on charges of dodging tax among other fraud, at an estimated cost to the Greek state of around two million euros.
The company had undertaken contracts for the destruction of goods and material, such as clothes, shoes, glasses etc, produced by well-known brands. Instead of destroying the goods, however, the company issued false certificates of destruction and put the products back on sale on the black market without keeping any record of the transactions or paying any sales or income tax.
In this way, the firm inflicted serious losses to public revenues, since the Greek state returned VAT paid by the firms whose goods were supposedly destroyed.
The case was cracked by an undercover police officer posing as a buyer of brand-name clothing and footwear, who contacted a 33-year-old employee of the recycling firm and was given the goods without any sales invoice or receipt, after he handed over 1,000 euros in pre-marked notes.
The employee was arrested and a subsequent raid revealed four containers full of brand-name goods worth an estimated 9.5 million euros in a warehouse within the recycling facility, which had been delivered for destruction.
The two suspects under arrest were taken before an Athens Misdemeanours Court prosecutor and will testify before an examining magistrate.
(source: ana-mpa)
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