The Leiria Judicial Court sentenced the former businessman to an effective prison sentence in a qualified case of fraud amounting to almost 1.8 million euros.
The court also sentenced four accused, including a technician and a chartered accountant.
The former businessman, who was chairman of the board of directors of a machinery and vehicle trading company based in the municipality of Batalha, was found guilty of two crimes of qualified fraud and sentenced to five years and nine months in prison, the ruling reveals. Monday and which Luz’s agency had access to on Tuesday.
This defendant has already been convicted in other cases involving breach of trust or qualified tax fraud.
For two crimes of qualified fraud, the vice-president of the company’s board of directors was also sentenced to one sentence of four years and nine months’ imprisonment, suspended for the same period, and with payment for that period of €1,799,063.54. to the state.
Of this amount, €773,389.46 is held jointly and severally with the other two defendants, the statutory accountant and the statutory accountant.
The official accounting specialist was sentenced for the crime of qualified fraud to four years’ imprisonment, suspended for the same period, but subject to the payment of solidarity to the state in the amount of €773,389.46 and an additional fine. ban on practicing the profession of a certified accountant also for four years.
The public auditor was found guilty of the offense of qualified fraud and sentenced to four years and six months’ imprisonment, suspended for the same period and subject to joint payment of €773,389.46 for that period with two other defendants, as well as an additional penalty . ban on practicing this profession for a period of four years.
The defendant company, insolvent and in liquidation, was found guilty of two offenses of qualified fraud with a single penalty of a fine of 1,200 days at a daily rate of five euros for a total amount of six thousand euros.
The ruling states that in early 2008, the two administrators, on their own and on behalf of the company, “deducted for tax purposes the year’s expenses and doubled and tripled invoices, thereby reducing the company’s taxable profits.”
In this and subsequent years, “there was an outflow of money from the account of one company to the account of another company, which was reflected in the accounting records” as payments to suppliers and the company’s debt to partners, which did not happen.
“With this money (…) the partners increased the company’s authorized capital and subscribed in equal parts to the company’s shares corresponding to the new authorized capital,” the document says.
According to the class action court, “they did so without defendant company withholding at source, as was its responsibility, the IRS release rate corresponding to the above-mentioned capital increase that defendant company and its partners appropriated.”
In 2012, following an audit, all of the defendants “falsified accounting and corporate records relating to the years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010 in order to avoid paying amounts owed to the IRS.”
The court stated that “the changes at issue were carried forward to 2007 to avoid taxes being missed upon expiration.”
According to the panel of judges, with the change in filings, the defendants “succeeded in recording a new increase in the company’s share capital, this time by ‘incorporating reserves’ to permit non-IRS taxation” because the Official Accounting Officer in 2012 submitted “amended annual replacement reports” relating to those years.
The company’s financial statements for 2009 and 2010 were subject to legal certification by the official auditor “without reservations and without emphasis.”
According to the court, the defendants acted “to distort the company’s results of operations” by cutting costs and overestimating ending inventories in order to “allow the company’s share capital to increase, this time from the reserves they had created (on paper) and in order to free the company from payment to the IRS, which would not be viable without the “arrangements” artificially reached through accounting.”
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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