Combining three of our favorite topics: skullduggery, Malta, and skullduggery on Malta.
Via a friend.
From The Shift:
A cross-border investigation based on a cache of over 300,000 pages of previously unseen tax and security investigations.
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Companies in Malta at the centre of scams by criminals that are robbing taxpayers of €50 billion annually.
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People’s taxes used to finance terrorism, the mafia and other illicit activities.
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Cash-for-passport schemes like Malta’s are a useful addition to fraudsters’ toolkits.
Companies registered in Malta have been found to be involved in a Europe-wide racket that is robbing European taxpayers of €50 billion annually.
A cache of over 300,000 pages of previously unseen German, Italian, Danish and Spanish tax and security services investigations, including covert recordings and interceptions, interrogations, and court documentation seen by The Shift News, provides unparalleled insight into the execution of some of the biggest scams in recent history and the players involved.
The probe is part of the cross-border Grand Theft Europe investigation, a Europe-wide investigation involving 35 media partners and covering all countries, coordinated by non-profit newsroom CORRECTIV.
The scam is referred to as Missing Trader Intra Community (MTIC) Fraud, also known as VAT carousel fraud. Companies registered in Malta, now appearing on the Malta Financial Services Authority’s register as “inactive”, are at the centre of illicit trades worth millions of euro.
Maltese entities involved in these fraud schemes are allowing criminals to steal taxpayers’ money from other EU member states, contributing to their VAT Gaps. The fraud is creating a black hole, conservatively estimated at around €50 billion per year, stolen by criminal gangs from people’s taxes and used to finance terrorism, the mafia and other illicit activity, according to the European Commission.....MUCH MORE
Malta on the radar
When Malta’s Finance Minister, Edward Scicluna, stepped onto the podium in a small conference room at the Grand Hotel Excelsior last February, he spoke of how the growth of the country’s economy under his watch was far outpacing that of European peers.
His audience could not have been too impressed. The 60 or so attendees were EU cross-border fraud and tax experts who flew in for a two-day intensive meeting of the EUROFISC network, a pan-European initiative set up to address one of the EU’s most pressing problems – VAT carousel fraud....
See also:
"How Europe's taxpayers have been swindled of €55 billion"
"German police raid BlackRock offices" (BLK)
Previously on Malta (not quite as sophisticated):
GFI Names the #1 Money Laundering Facility of 2018
After Reporter's Murder: "Malta's Pilatus Bank has European licence withdrawn"
Who Killed Investigative Journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia?
Malta, A Modern Smugglers’ Hideout"
"Death in a Smugglers’ Paradise"
