How criminals use straw males to defraud the state of billions in tax cash | EUROtoday

Criminal gangs defraud the state of billions of euros in tax cash yearly. rbbIn their analysis, they use addicts and homeless folks from Eastern Europe as so-called straw males – and a community of firms that’s obscure.

It is darkish, it smells of mould, the hallways of the constructing are blocked with cumbersome waste. Tomek Z. opens the door – bare-chested, flip-flops. The 60-year-old man from Legnica in Poland is the managing director of 13 firms throughout Germany. Among them is a transport firm with a enterprise deal with at Potsdamer Platz in Berlin-Mitte. But he is aware of nothing about it.

What he can keep in mind, he says in rbb-Interview, was that he was as soon as approached in entrance of a store. At the time, he had no cash to drink. “But you have to drink, the main thing is that someone buys you something,” he continued. So he “got in the car and drove to Germany.”

In his hometown of Legnica – a four-hour drive from Berlin – eleven different managing administrators of German restricted firms are registered. From right here they formally handle round 80 firms all through Germany, lots of them in Berlin. These embody firms that, in response to extracts from the industrial register, are concerned within the automotive, electrical energy and actual property commerce, but in addition development, transport and safety firms in addition to export-import firms. However, in response to analysis by the rbb lengthy useless, others reported lacking. Still others are alcoholics and homeless. They by no means had something to do with the precise enterprise of the businesses they’re answerable for. They are so-called straw males who – unknowingly – have been delivered to Germany.

Thousands of straw males in Germany

The Polish metropolis of Legnica is just not the one place the place straw males are recruited for Germany. “These people are brought to Western Europe by the busload,” says Ralf Simon, chief investigator within the Organized Crime Department of the Customs Criminal Investigation Office (ZKA) in Cologne. Straw males from Poland, Romania or Bulgaria seem in virtually each main investigation. “We are talking about several thousand straw men and straw companies that are used,” Simon continued in an interview with rbb24 SearchTheir use “always serves to conceal things, conceal money flows, conceal profits and make investigations more difficult”.

If the straw males come from outdoors the EU, this cover-up works notably nicely, as a result of German investigators can’t merely journey to Poland or Bulgaria to talk to a straw man. They need to adjust to sophisticated guidelines, provoke administrative help procedures, and rent interpreters. A prolonged course of that buys the legal backers time.

This can also be why, in response to the Customs Criminal Investigation Office, a veritable “market” has been established in Germany, the place “professional service providers” supply straw males. According to the investigators' findings, all related legal organizations in Germany – whether or not “mafia, clans, motorcycle gangs” – resort to this.

Professional brokers and notaries

In order for the straw males from Legnica, Poland, to formally turn out to be managing administrators of German firms, they first needed to seem earlier than a German notary: and not using a notary's certification, no change of managing director is feasible. The notaries need to verify the ID playing cards of the brand new managing administrators, confirm signatures and assess whether or not the folks sitting in entrance of them are even able to doing enterprise.

A staff of reporters from rbb has examined a whole lot of notarial contracts in German industrial registers over the course of a number of months. One and the identical interpreter was current at round 70 contracts, all of which have been signed within the title of the straw males from Legnica. He additionally comes from Legnica. According to rbb-Research exhibits that the alleged interpreter is a legal with a earlier conviction in Poland. He himself is claimed to have accrued half 1,000,000 in tax money owed in Germany.

Tomek Z. from Legnica additionally met this “interpreter” a number of instances: at a notary close to Hamburg, because the evaluation of the notarial contracts exhibits. But Tomek Z. doesn’t keep in mind this and in dialog with the rbb stunned that the notary is claimed to have licensed the contracts through which he was made managing director. “A notary is an official, isn't he?”, asks Tomek Z. rbb-Reporterteam. “You know – I was drunk the whole time and this notary, he agreed to it?!” The notary who had licensed the contracts was not out there for an interview and didn’t reply the questionnaire of the rbb left unanswered.

The system

“The notaries – it's striking that they're always the same ones – they're part of the system. Without them, the whole system doesn't work,” says a tax investigator from Baden-Württemberg, who can’t be named. The investigator investigates main tax fraud instances, and more and more additionally towards organized crime. He offers with straw males from Eastern Europe virtually every single day.

The “system” that the investigator is speaking about is a posh community of firms that’s obscure. Officially, these networks are run by managers from Eastern Europe. According to the investigator, their sole objective is “to exploit people and harm the tax authorities.” These company networks allow the legal backers, whose identities are hid because of the straw males, to commit severe crimes similar to cash laundering, smuggling, social safety fraud and tax fraud working into tens of millions.

When the fraud is found, the very first thing that’s investigated is the managing administrators accountable, i.e. the straw males. On the opposite hand, in response to the tax investigator, it’s virtually unimaginable to take motion towards the notaries concerned in Germany: “It's a thorn in my side too, but they don't have to tell us anything, just like with the doctor. Our hands are tied by law.”

Economic crime on a grand scale

For Annegret Ritter-Victor of the European Public Prosecutor's Office, it’s apparent that “organized criminal structures are increasingly discovering the area of ​​white-collar crime for themselves.” Just just lately, the skilled public prosecutor succeeded in a posh trial in Berlin in placing the organizers of a tax fraud involving luxurious vehicles and corona masks behind bars. The injury: 50 million euros. Here, too, a German notary, a posh community of firms and unsuspecting straw males from Poland performed a central function. Her colleague, public prosecutor Tobias Lübbert, even places the whole injury from such tax crimes within the EU at 50-60 billion euros yearly.

It is figures like these that motivated quite a few EU states to ascertain the European Public Prosecutor's Office in 2021. Because it makes cross-border investigations a lot simpler, at the very least in the case of worldwide tax fraud. Annegret Ritter-Victor and Tobias Lübbert are a part of a staff of prosecutors that Germany has despatched to this new establishment. Without higher cross-border cooperation, such giant fraud schemes could be virtually unimaginable to research, the 2 say. They welcome the truth that Poland just lately joined the European Public Prosecutor's Office. Because with out the straw males from Poland, who usually have to offer their names with out figuring out something, tax fraud in Germany wouldn’t be potential.

On July 30, 2024 at 10:50 p.m., the primary channel will present the documentary “The Straw Man Cartel. Service Providers for the Mafia” concerning the straw man recruitment system – or already now out there within the ARD media library.