Investigators have arrested two allegedly responsible executives of a million-dollar sales tax carousel in Frankfurt am Main.
The men, who have been seeking international arrest warrants since the summer of 2014, had arrived at the airport on Tuesday, according to the Attorney General's Office in Frankfurt. The two 37- and 40-year-old men have been in custody since Wednesday.
The two accused were "strongly suspected" of having participated as members of a gang in a VAT carousel in connection with the trade of air pollution rights from August 2009 to April 2010. Overall, the gang should have evaded about 136 million euros sales tax.
Chief of the scammers sentenced to eight years imprisonment
Emission rights were purchased from abroad via German companies and resold in Germany via intermediate companies, without paying sales tax. The last company in the chain is said to have resold the CO2 certificates abroad. For the fraudsters could be refunded by the tax office sales tax, which had never been paid.
According to the prosecutors, the two men, as governors of the gang leader, were instrumental in planning and executing the deals. From Dubai, they are supposed to have fed the certificates into the retail chains via a company controlled by them and, as managers of four companies in Frankfurt, Munich and Berlin, have controlled the sales tax carousel.
The head of the fraudsters was arrested at a boxing match in Las Vegas in May 2014 and sentenced to eight years in prison by the Frankfurt district court in April 2016 for tax evasion in 25 very serious cases.