Joint operation

• The research, which began in the province of Barcelona in the month of August, has been carried out in the provinces of Alicante, Castellón and Valencia
• Only in a warehouse in the Marina Alta region the amount defrauded from the Public Treasury would amount to 30,000 euros and the material immobilized in a warehouse in Ribarroja would have a retail price of 138,765 euros

December 1, 2022.- The Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency and the Civil Guard of Alicante have immobilized 20,231 bottles of alcoholic beverages for fraud against the regulations on Special Taxes in the provinces from Alicante, Castellón and Valencia.

In the month of September, information from the Barcelona Civil Guard (Fiscal Service) was received at the Alicante Civil Guard Command, referring to the carrying out of various inspections in businesses selling alcoholic beverages to the public in the aforementioned Catalan province. and that would have resulted in the detection of violations of the regulations on excise taxes.

From the information received, it was clear that an alcoholic beverage distillery located in the Marina Alta region was involved in this fraud, so the Tax Agency was notified, as the competent body in matters of Special Taxes, continuing the investigations of jointly between the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency and the Alicante Civil Guard.

In the first phase, and after collecting the precise information on the facts investigated, the procedure was carried out on September 26 by components of the Fiscal Patrol of the Company of Calpe, the Customs Surveillance Service in Alicante and the Judicial Police. of the Civil Guard of Jávea to the inspection of a factory and a warehouse in the Marina Alta region, as well as a store selling alcoholic beverages to the public in the municipality of Ondara, all of them belonging to the same business group.

In this action, various irregularities were discovered such as bottles of alcoholic beverages without the required tax marks, drinks with fraudulent labeling in terms of batch, graduation or capacity, as well as the discovery of a significant number of empty bottle shells carrying seals, in perfect condition. conditions to be reused. Additionally, a hidden cabin was discovered, adjacent to the ship. The sum of evidence revealed a deliberate and recurring 'modus operandi', and such a magnitude of fraud that it led to a second operational phase in the investigation.

On November 11, 2022, this second phase was carried out, which aimed to inspect 14 establishments throughout the Valencian Community: Benidorm (5), Calpe (2), Benissa (1), Finestrat (1), Ondara (1), Navarrés (1), Ribarroja (1), Onda (1) and Torreblanca (1).  Units from the Fiscal Service of the Civil Guard, the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency, as well as the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard participated in all of them.

In practically all of these inspections, irregularities were discovered regarding excise taxes similar to those already highlighted in the first phase, all of them closely related to fraudulent use of the seals that must be attached to bottles with alcoholic content, assuming the evasion of paying the special tax, or sometimes a lower payment than due based on the alcohol content of each specific product.

This action is of great importance both for the tax fraud discovered in the field of Special Taxes on alcoholic beverages, and for the protection of consumers and in the fight against fraud and unfair competition, to the detriment of legal trade of this type. of products, avoiding the advantageous situation that incurring the discovered fraud entails for the infringing company, by seeing its operating cost reduced, unlike that of its direct competition, which would be significantly higher, as well as the damage caused to the Public Treasury by the reduction in taxation that should be received in accordance with current excise tax regulations.