Greece’s Financial Crime Unit (SDOE) has issued fines to Greek businesses and professionals for dodgy accounting practises, the Finance Ministry said Friday.
After auditing various businesses across Greece throughout April, SDOE forwarded 507 reports of bogus invoices and non-issued receipts to customs offices and tax authorities, so as to trace back the declarations of all audited parties and root out any violations.
Meanwhile, SDOE officials imposed a total of €142 million in fines in 25 cases where businesses were found to have issued or received phoney invoices, while self-employed professionals had failed to issue receipts for the provision of their services.
The audits revealed that advertising firms in the affluent central Athens district of Kolonaki and in the suburb of Nea Filadelfia had issued bogus tax details totaling around €20 million, while a dermatologist in Kolonaki had failed to issue €1.4 million worth of receipts over a three-year period.
In one case, SDOE found that a private-sector employee had concealed income of €4.5 million by declaring that his permanent residence was abroad, while in the western port city of Patras a downtown coffee house was found to have been using an undeclared cash register, which had issued 13,089 false receipts.
Recently, the Greek Finance Ministry has faced mounting criticism for cracking down hard on Greek entrepreneurs with relatively small tax debts to the state, while allowing larger-scale evaders to go unpunished.
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