Prosecutor’s Office, with its eyes on company tax accounts

From committing a tax violation and paying Dian and getting scolded with a pat on the back, 112 Colombian companies began to see a rather gray panorama, since crimes punishable by prison sentences of more than 8 years were set up and they could face actions of extinction of the right of domain.

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This is the new tax reality in the country since the Specialized Directorate against Tax Crimes began to operate 15 months ago, and that at the cutoff of last July it already had imputations for more than $2.6 billion.

This unit can achieve what any government seeks to collect with a tax reform and even more so, to the extent that its processes become more sophisticated and the Dian provides it with the necessary inputs to prosecute crimes.

The prosecutors and investigators that make up this dependency specializes in demonstrating who keeps the VAT, those who evade it, those who commit crimes such as hiding assets or inflating liabilities in the income statement; to discover the mafias of open, technical and money laundering smuggling resulting from illicit activities, among other crimes.

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Avoiding them is not an easy task, to give an idea of ​​what it is about, while the FBI suffers to investigate former President Trump, the financial crimes division of the Prosecutor’s Office of that country, has already charged the financial director of the Trump Organization tycoon , Allen Weisselberg, and is considering using him as a witness in a tax case against the former president. These are not novice researchers.

Returning to Colombia, in its task the Directorate of Tax Crimes found, with a criminal structure that had sold invoices for more than $1.5 billion to “legal” companies, to keep the VAT that had to be transferred to the coffers of the National Treasury (it is estimated that from the State it is about $300 billion).

The investigators arrived at the structure, dismantled it and found that at least 3,000 “legal” companies bought false invoices from them to deduct VAT and keep the money.

Of these companies, the investigators filtered them from largest to smallest and began the imputation to 112 companies that together report the largest amounts, since they range from $20 billion and others exceed $100 billion. In these cases, the Management does not consider the configuration of a simple fraud, but rather that their behaviors are adapted to the crimes of conspiracy to commit a crime and illicit enrichment of individuals.

In cases of omission of a withholding agent or collector, once the subpoenas were initiated by the investigating entity, some companies began to pay and as of last July, more than $65,410 million had already entered the State coffers, which the firms involved had to recognize. in criminal proceedings against him for tax crimes.

As a consequence of the foregoing, of course, it is possible that in the processing of the process there are accusations, files or preclusions. These last two cases occur when those involved decide to anticipate the criminal consequences and turn over to the State the resources for which they are investigated, in order to stop the process against them.

Compared to other types of tax fraud, things are at a different price, because when the Prosecutor’s Office formulates charges, it is no longer possible to stop the investigations. In many cases, the companies came with their lawyers and argued that in their particular situations they were simple infractions, for which they considered that they only had to pay, to extinguish the criminal action, but the answer they found was that it was not possible.

There, the Prosecutor’s Office was forced to expand the investigations and argue that it was not just a fraud and call them to charge them, for more serious crimes, based on an extensive investigation that required undercover agents, surveillance work, telephone interceptions and collaboration of entities such as the Polfa, the Dian and the Uiaf to demonstrate that they are true criminal structures designed to defraud the treasury.

Faced with these accusations, several companies paid and are seeking pre-agreements with the Prosecutor’s Office to reduce penalties that can be imposed on those responsible, which could exceed 8 years in prison; in addition to facing possible actions of extinction of domain over its assets.

Cesar Giraldo