The financial police on Friday announced the cracking of a case of fraud at the expense of the state by an Aspropyrgos-based recycling company engaging in tax dodges and other types of fraud. According to information released by the police, both the owner and his daughter have been placed under arrest. The estimated damage to the Greek state is around 2.0 million euros.

The company had undertaken contracts for the destruction of goods and material, such as clothes, shoes, glasses etc, produced by well-known brands. Instead of destroying the goods, however, the company issued false certificates of destruction and put the products back on sale on the black market without keeping any record of the transactions or paying any taxes.

In this way the firm inflicted serious losses in terms of lost public revenues, since the Greek state returned VAT paid by the firms whose goods were supposedly destroyed.
The case was cracked by an undercover police officer posing as a buyer of brand-name clothing and footwear, who contacted a 33-year-old employee of the recycling firm and was given the goods without any sales invoice or receipt, after he handed over 1,000 euros in premarked notes.

The employee was arrested and a subsequent raid revealed four containers full of brand-name goods worth an estimated 9.5 million euros in a warehouse within the recycling facility, which had been delivered for destruction.

The two suspects under arrest were taken before an Athens Misdemeanours Court prosecutor and will testify before the 5th examining magistrate.