Bulgarian authorities disrupt crime group involved in procurement tax avoidance

The Chief Directorate for Combatting Organised Crime and the special prosecutor’s office disrupted a crime group for evading taxes related to public procurements. Four people have been charged.

In a press conference on 20^th of December, the prosecutor’s office explained that the crime group was involved in public procurements related to renovation of buildings. The prosecutor's office said that repairs were carried out, but the money that was supposed to be paid as taxes to the state budget, did not go there. So far, nearly 750,000 BGN have been seized in the investigation, and coins with Ataturk's image have been seized in a bank safe.

The Prosecutor's Office said that for the period 2017-2018, the group had about 50 public procurement contracts. There were projects in the municipality of Glavnica, Lisichino and Varbitsa. Major public buildings, kindergartens, watercourses have been repaired. The investigators said companies were registered in the names of low-income earners.

Ivailo Spiridonov, Director of CDCOC: This operation is part of the efforts of the CDCOC and the specialised prosecutor's office on one of their main priority tasks to improve the country's fiscal stance. These companies are doing business, but they do not provide or do not report all the information about their revenues to the NRA, thus getting involved in a crime that we have, in our view, managed to prove jointly with the specialised prosecutor's office.

Kiril Peichinov, Deputy Head of the Specialised Prosecutor's Office: One company controlled by the group avoided paying BGN 380,000 in VAT to the budget for one year. Dozens of companies are the subject of the investigation.

A large number of false stamps and documents have been seized in the course of the investigation. At this point, there is no information on whether municipal officials were involved in the corruption scheme.

The alert for the alleged crime group was reported to the CDCOC in October 2017.

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