Meat traders fined staggering amounts for fraudulent financial accounting
The Vilnius Regional Court found six persons involved in the trade of meat products guilty of fraudulent financial accounting and providing false data on income, profit and assets in an organised group, the prosecutor's office announced.
The court fined the convicted persons a total amount of EUR 83.4 thousand.
The civil claim of the State Tax Inspectorate was almost fully satisfied and the convicts were ordered to pay 272,178 euros to the state to compensate for the property damage.
The case established that the two defendants had formed an organised group of six persons with the aim of taking advantage of a complex and fictitious tax evasion scheme to generate more revenue through the retail and wholesale trade in meat products.
It is submitted that each member of the organised group had a role to play in the commission of the offence.
In this scheme, in 2018-2019, according to law enforcement authorities, members of the group, on behalf of two fictitious companies with no real activity, acquired meat products from Polish companies for almost €1.3 million in 2018-2019, which were later sold in Lithuania without accounting documents.
According to the prosecutor's office, the detection of the crime was made more difficult by the fact that the members of the organised group used conspiratorial measures, a separate room was used to hide the documents of the fictitious companies, many of the documents were simply destroyed, and the fictitious companies were included in the criminal scheme.
„The Court stated that the actions of the convicted persons in order to achieve a common criminal result were well-organised, coordinated and complementary. The members of the organised group acted in prior agreement, they were aware of the illegality of their actions, they had a clear common goal, and the state suffered very significant material damage due to unpaid taxes," the prosecutor's office said in a statement.
In order to ensure the compensation of the civil claim, the prosecutors in charge of the pre-trial investigation ordered the temporary restriction of the rights to the convicted persons' property. This restriction remained in force until the civil claim was settled.
This judgment of the court of first instance may be appealed against.
