The mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta is one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in Europe. One approach in the fight against organized crime is tax investigations. The investigators are now reporting success.
Munich – Police officers and public prosecutors in Germany, Italy and Bulgaria have arrested eleven wanted members of the southern Italian mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta in a major international operation.
The accused are accused of forming a criminal organization and tax evasion in the amount of 13 million euros, as the police headquarters of Upper Bavaria North in Ingolstadt reported on Wednesday.
Four of the people wanted by arrest warrant were arrested in Bavaria, six more in Italy and one in Bulgaria. According to the police, these eleven main suspects are assigned to the ‘Ndrangheta. The investigators searched 46 apartments and buildings in the three countries. In Bavaria alone, according to the police headquarters, more than 80 police and tax investigators were deployed, including forces from a special task force. The focus in Bavaria was the Ingolstadt area, as the “Bild” newspaper reported.
The investigations are directed against an alleged sales tax carousel, a fraud model that has been practiced in organized crime for decades. Companies can have VAT refunded if they export their products to other countries and do not sell to end customers. Fraud gangs take advantage of this by exporting goods – which sometimes only exist on paper – from one country to the next.
The eleven arrested are cars that are said to have been “exported” several times. Investigators confiscated several luxury cars.
The Munich Center of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office, whose focus is on combating sales tax carousels, is in charge of the investigation. The Augsburg tax investigation team is also involved.
‘Ndrangheta, based in Calabria, is considered to be one of the largest and most powerful criminal organizations in Europe. According to estimates, it generates annual sales in the double-digit billions. Tax investigations are a proven recipe law enforcement officers use to tackle organized crime. The case of the US mafia boss Al Capone, who was sentenced to a long prison term in 1931 for tax evasion, has gone down in history. dpa
