EPPO Germany carries out searches at bank in €200m VAT fraud probe, involving a company MD accused of creating a fictitious business identity for processing transactions

The suspect received bank transfers totalling over €200 million from 127 different companies in Italy and Slovakia to his accounts in Germany between 2016 and 2022. The money is understood to have originated primarily from a VAT carousel fraud – a complex criminal scheme that takes advantage of EU rules on cross-border transactions between its Member States, as these are exempt from value-added tax…