The case involving Pizza Fan appears to be developing into yet another fiasco for the financial police and the renowned Greek FBI due to mishandling, recalling similar past cases such as that of agrarian unionist Kostas Anestidis or even earlier the Richardos pawnshops.
They caught a «hare» without... «tying» it down
The Minister of Citizen Protection, Mr. Michalis Chrysochoidis, wishing to advertise the successes of the financial police, spoke of investigations carried out over the past year and a half.
However, while these investigations «caught the hare», they seemingly lacked the professionalism required in order to... «tie» it down.
And thus they drew up the bill without... the bill being calculated.
What do we mean...
Quite simply, the police in the Pizza Fan case claim that the damage due to non-remittance of taxes exceeds 35 million euros, and that the percentage of receipts not issued by the stores in the network is in the order of 20%.
Arbitrary calculations without an audit
Yet all these are entirely arbitrary calculations, as in the case of Pizza Fan no tax audit has been conducted.
And without a tax audit, there can be no determination of the amount of tax evasion.
Thus, when the time comes for the case to be judged, there will be no evidentiary elements regarding the scale of fraud and tax evasion.
It is noted, moreover, that the founder of Pizza Fan was remanded in custody for the offense of fraud and extensive tax evasion.
The real scale
The question, however, is how extensive the fraud and tax evasion actually are.
As sources familiar with proceedings at AADE report, the scale of tax evasion is a submultiple, and this will emerge during the tax audit.
Some argue that it ranges between 1.5 million euros and 2 million euros, while others believe that with great difficulty the amount of tax evasion will approach 5 million euros.
Be that as it may, these amounts have absolutely no bearing on what the financial police claim in the case file.
The insistence that had a purpose
And with such figures, it is obvious that the climate changes completely for Mr. Antaras.
It is no coincidence, after all, that the latter in his plea insisted on tax offenses and offered to pay the liabilities, knowing full well that without a tax audit there is no determination of tax violations.
And it is obvious that within an immediate timeframe, a tax audit must be conducted.
At least they found corrupt officials
Of course, one cannot fail to acknowledge to the FBI that beyond the amateurish handling, it also brought to the surface relations between employees of AADE and the ownership of Pizza Fan, a fact that forced Mr. Pitsilis to officially request data from the police regarding the existing findings.
And the major issue for AADE is that it left unaudited a company with a turnover of 60 million euros per year for years, a company that did not even adopt a tax audit by a certified auditor.
The «interesting» turnover increase
It is also interesting that after the revelation of the Pizza Fan case, the turnover of similar chains, according to information from AADE, increased by 7%.
And it is not clear whether the 7% is due to increased demand across other chains caused by developments at Pizza Fan, or simply fear of audits led to more receipts being issued.
In any case, the fact that there was no cooperation between the police and AADE in this specific case, as well as in other cases, provides indications of a serious trust deficit.
And this trust deficit leads to mishandling, with the sole beneficiaries at the end of the day being the lawbreakers and tax evaders.
Nikos Karoutzos
nkaroutzos@gmail.com
www.bankingnews.gr
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