Brazil News: Authorities Uncover Tax Fraud Scheme
Authorities in Brazil have announced that they have uncovered a tax fraud scheme at the Finance Ministry's tax appeals board.
The news of tax evading practices comes at a particularly bad time for the country as the socialist nation is still reeling from a multibillion-dollar corruption scandal involving kickbacks at the state oil company Petrobras.
As reported in Reuters, federal police inspector Marlon Cajado has stated that companies bribed members of the CARF, a body within the Finance Ministry that listens to appeals on tax disputes, in order to receive favorable rulings that reduced or even in some cases waived the amounts of money owed.
Cajado claimed that 70 industrial, agricultural, civil engineering, and financial companies were currently being investigated on suspicion of bribing tax officials.
On Thursday police raided the offices of the tax appeals board in Brasilia, as well as the homes and offices of tax consultants and lawyers suspected of acting as intermediaries.
Cajado said at a news conference that police had seized documents and 1.3 million reais in cash in the raids in three cities.
No arrests were made.
Investigators have so far detected suspect appeals rulings that might have ended up costing the state 5 billion reais in tax evasion and are now probing other cases that could raise the total to 19 billion reais.
The conversion rate of the reais to the U.S. dollar is $1 to 3.19 Brazilian reais.
The cases now under investigation came before the board between 2005 and 2013, a time before the current Finance Minister Joaquim Levy, who will not be held responsible for the tax scandal, took office.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's government has suffered due to the Petrobras scandal coupled with a stagnant economy, and this latest tax scandal will undoubtedly add to her administration’s problems.
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