On Thursday (7.2.2019), the Justice Department carried out multiple raids, following a complaint from the AFIP, against a criminal organization dedicated to the creation of ghost companies. In their actions, they generated false invoices that would have allowed them to launder money and evade the sum of $1.250 billion in VAT and income tax.
The procedure was ordered by the National Court for Economic Criminal Matters No. 7, in charge of Dr. Juan Galván Greenway, Secretariat 13, in more than 20 addresses in the city of Buenos Aires and Greater Buenos Aires, with the support of 115 AFIP agents and almost a hundred gendarmes.
The operation led to the seizure of documentation and computer equipment which would confirm the existence of an illicit association made up of at least 25 people, two accounting firms and a law firm.
One of the leaders of the organization would be in charge of recruiting people. who would pretend to be responsible for companies, taking advantage of the spiritual and economic needs of the faithful of an Umbanda temple in Bosques, province of Buenos Aires.
These are people in a state of extreme economic and social vulnerability., who were convinced by the temple leaders to appear as presidents of 11 companies with invoices as large as they were false. In some cases, these “services” were compensated with a meager payment that they received for signing checks or other documentation.
At the end of last year, AFIP reported to the courts that the organization is dedicated to the creation of non-existent entities (11 power plants) which allowed their recipients to issue multiple apocryphal receipts to evade millions of dollars in VAT (for the calculation of non-existent tax credits), Profits (for the calculation of non-existent deductions from taxed income) and undocumented outflows of funds.
Agency officials collected evidence of the maneuvers through personal interviews with religious believers who have acted as presidents of companies with large turnover figures, to the monitoring of IP addresses from which invoices were made and the filing of sworn statements.
The crimes reported are tax conspiracy, aggravated tax evasion,falsification of documents and money laundering.
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