Prague, April 5 (CTK) – The Tax Cobra squad proposed that five people from Slovakia be charged with VAT tax evasion in trade with precious metals with an estimated damage at 500 million crowns, Jaroslav Ibehej, the spokesman for the National Centre against Organised Crime (NCOZ), told CTK on Thursday.
The case is being supervised by Prague’s High State Attorney Office.
The accused were purchasing precious metals in Slovakia between 2001-2012 by the means of purposively established corporations and consequently sold them in the Czech Republic. They were to pay VAT at the moment of the sale of the goods, but they were stating false data on fictitious purchases of goods in the Czech Republic instead, for almost the same amounts as the sums of the material sold, the police said.
In this way, they evaded their tax duty of up to tens of millions of crowns, decreasing it to mere thousands of crowns, Ibehej said in a press release.
The five accused are prosecuted out of custody. They are facing five to ten years in prison.
“The case was relatively complicated, particularly because all the accused are Slovak citizens and the majority of the acts of the criminal proceedings had to be carried out in Slovakia,” Ibehej added.
The Tax Cobra squad, formed by police, customs officers and financial administration specialists, has been operating since 2014. It aims to fight high tax evasion. It prevented tax evasions over 1.4 billion crowns in 2017 and over 3.3 billion in 2016.
