- EU officials warned that organised crime is causing up to €32.8bn in annual losses to the EU budget by exploiting gaps between VAT, customs, and law-enforcement systems across member states.
- VAT fraud remains a major issue, with criminal networks using missing trader/carousel schemes and increasingly combining VAT fraud with customs abuse, shell companies, logistics, digital marketplaces, payment flows, and false documents.
- A Czech case involved an alleged €17.4m VAT fraud scheme on Chinese imports, where goods were falsely declared as supplies to non-existent companies in other member states and then sold via e-commerce logistics centres without VAT being paid.
- OLAF and EPPO also investigated a wider scheme involving textiles, footwear, and electric bikes entering via Poland and Belarus, using false transit confirmations and abuse of customs Procedure 42 to evade about €79m in VAT and €180m in customs duties.
Source: euperspectives.eu
Note that this post was (partially) written with the help of AI. It is always useful to review the original source material, and where needed to obtain (local) advice from a specialist.
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