By John Oates for The Register.
This story has been reproduced with permission.
Follow the money...
Every fraudster who had his collar felt in the last two years
for carousel fraud had an account with the First Curacao
International Bank (FCIB).
The Caribbean bank was shut down after raids in cooperation with
Dutch authorities following raids in Holland and Wales. HMRC
believes many of the 2,500 UK citizens who also use the bank are
involved in carousel fraud.
HMRC released a statement: "HMRC has in place a comprehensive
strategy to deal with carousel fraud, and will actively pursue the
organised criminals involved and deny them the proceeds of these
crimes, wherever the money trails take us anywhere in the
world.
"Our investigations in recent months have shown that FCIB has
regularly been used by fraudsters and we are confident that the
Dutch actions will have a significant disruptive effect on fraud in
the UK."
A government source told the Guardian: "We think
the carousel fraud industry has been holed below the
waterline."
Carousel fraud involves importing, or claiming to import, goods
from another EU country without paying VAT, then selling them on
and pocketing the tax. The same goods will often go from country to
country earning fraudulent tax at every stage. Increasingly, the
goods don't even physically move.
Dutch police want to question the bank's founder John Deuss.
Deuss admitted to reporters that the bank was under investigation
but denied any wrongdoing.
Customs investigators used powers under the Proceeds of Crime
Act to track the fraudsters' earnings. But FCIB had problems
finding a bank to handle final payments to its UK customers –
this forced it to suspend accounts.
HMRC recently got permission from the European Union to change
the way VAT on mobile phones and computer chips, most often used
for carousel fraud, is collected.
More from The Guardian here.
In other news a BBC investigation has found the total value of
VAT-fraud could be up to four times higher than Customs estimates.
Panorama used figures from Eurocanet – a European
Commission sponsored joint police initiative. It estimates total UK
fraud to be as high as €12.2bn. More here. Customs
disputes the figures.
© The Register
2006
