Twenty-six defendants accused of tax fraud with the sale of vehicles

Na publication on the official website of the Regional Attorney General's Office of Porto, the MP explains that the criminal activity of the 26 defendants extended between 2021 and 2025 and resulted in the obtaining of almost 5.8 million euros advantages, a value that is required to be declared lost in favor of the state.

According to the charge, dated August 31, the criminal activity was carried out by three defendants, one of whom was an accountant, who used five companies to “simulate the purchase and sale of vehicles and other car components.”.

The MP believes that those purchases “masked” the “true activity of buying vehicles abroad”, which is attributed to two groups within those defendants, who sold those vehicles in national territory “in exchange for financial rewards”.

The prosecution maintains that the “real activity” of the sale of vehicles on national territory by the two groups referred to above relied on a “fake billing circuit” which was made available by the first group of defendants and in which “the sales of vehicles purchased in the European Union and sold on national territory have been subtracted from taxation”.

In parallel, the MP defends, one of the defendants developed “equal activity carried out autonomously, using those first defendants or their companies, with the purpose of obtaining undue deductions of VAT and not delivery of tax to the State and also of collecting undue amounts of tax, through VAT refunds”.

One of the defendants, the text states, is attributed to the activity of laundering advantages of crimes, with the collaboration of other defendants, “in the acquisition of vehicles, in the simulation of payments and in the preparation of fake documents to support the financial circuit of fictitious payments”.

According to the statement, two of the defendants are subject to the measure of coercion of preventive detention, cumulated with the measure of coercion of prohibition of contact with the other defendants.

Two other defendants are subject to measures for the coercion of collateral, prohibition of contact and prohibition of leaving national territory.