Judicial administrator and son accused of fraud and receiving advantage

O Port Public Prosecutor (MP) accused 11 defendants, including an insolvency administrator and his son, for crimes of tax fraud and receipt and undue offer of advantage, today informed the Regional Attorney General's Office of Porto (PGRP).

In a notice published on its website, the PGRP states that, by order dated 18 September, the MP deduced a charge against five persons, including one insolvency administrator and his son, and six companies.

According to the same note, the MP imposed on the insolvency administrator the practice of five crimes of tax fraud, four crimes of undue receipt of advantage and eight crimes of abuse of power.

The son of this defendant was accused of the practice of a crime of undue receipt of advantage, a crime also imputed to the societies managed by both.

The remaining defendants and companies, acquirers of real estate in insolvency proceedings, have been charged with crimes of undue advantage offering.

The prosecution states that, between 2018 and 2022, the insolvency administrator will have committed successive acts of tax fraud, through the “fake billing circulation” between its activity on the individual behalf and the business activity of its companies.

This conduct, according to the MP, allowed him to obtain dividends based on IRS in the overall value of EUR 473,465,60.

The MP also imposed on this defendant the obtaining of undue property advantages in the context of its activity as insolvency administrator provided by the defendants and property acquiring companies in 13 insolvency proceedings, between 2016 and 2022.

The prosecution states that the defendant “acted in violation of functional duties, including the acts of submitting the sales of real estate in the form of a closed letter to the detriment of the electronic auction, the setting of sales values below the market value, the non-publication of sales announcements, the non-information to the other interested parties, and the response to requests from other interested parties for the display of the real estate, always benefiting the defendants and their companies acquiring such real estate in those cases”.

The MP also says that in order to maintain the climate of permeability and favor, the three defendants acquiring real estate and their management companies sold to the defendant insolvency administrator and his son five properties at prices below the market value, providing them with undue equity advantages of the overall value of EUR 232.727,43.

The MP requested that an amount of more than EUR 3 million be declared lost to the State, corresponding to the criminal advantage allegedly obtained by the defendants, and also requires civil compensation of EUR 473,000 for the subtracted taxes.