EPPO uncovers €220m VAT fraud involving Italian alcohol exporters

The investigation uncovered a highly skilled white collar criminal organisation suspected of using false invoices to evade the payment of taxes for exporting large quantities of alcoholic beverages, using an intra-community 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 (VAT).