Operation 'Scarpe II'

• More than 170 Agency officials have visited 41 premises of manufacturers and businesses in the sector, while initiating inspections of 74 companies and 29 individuals linked to the company.
• Previous actions allowed investigators to determine that the companies affected by today's operation were making illegal sales to other companies in the sector.

March 3, 2020 .- The Tax Agency has today launched a major coordinated operation in eight autonomous communities against tax fraud in the footwear sector. The operation, called 'Scarpe II', involves the start of inspections of 74 companies and 29 related individuals (partners, directors and people from the family environment), through the appearance of officials from the Agency's Inspection area in 41 premises in this sector.

The operation particularly affects shoe manufacturers, but also, to a lesser extent, retailers. The device that has been deployed reaches premises located in Andalusia (1), Aragon (12), Asturias (2), Canary Islands (3), Castilla-La Mancha (4), Galicia (1), La Rioja (8) and the Valencian Community (10).

'Scarpe II' has been coordinated by the Department of Financial and Tax Inspection, with the participation of 157 officials from the Inspection Area, including staff from the Computer Audit Units (UAI), as well as with the support of police officers and 15 Customs Surveillance officials from the Tax Agency.

Combined annual turnover of 240 million

The inspections that began today and will continue in the coming months date back to the beginning of last year, when a series of investigations carried out by the Tax Agency in the sector revealed that most of the companies affected by this operation were making black sales to other companies in the sector.

The companies that have now been inspected together have a reported annual turnover of 240 million euros. In the preliminary investigations, no correspondence was found between these declared amounts and the entries recorded in the bank accounts of the companies currently under inspection.

With the visits made today at the various premises, the Agency intends to directly access the existing accounting or auxiliary documentation and information, including the computer systems for processing information, with the aim of confirming and quantifying the volume of undeclared activity by the companies and, where appropriate, detecting the possible existence of computer programs for concealing sales and irregular billing schemes.

The actions will also be directed at people from the corporate and family environment of the companies inspected, people who show external signs of wealth that are not consistent with the income they have declared, and who in certain cases also appear or were listed as holders of rental contracts for safe deposit boxes in financial institutions that will now be sealed off as a precautionary measure by the investigators.

The antecedent of 'Scarpe'

Today is the second time that the Tax Agency has carried out a large coordinated operation targeting the footwear sector. Operation Scarpe was already carried out in 2014, in which 29 establishments belonging to 11 companies in the sector, mainly retailers, were raided.

Although 'Scarpe II' has no significant connections with that operation, the Agency's successive control plans have underlined the need to review tax behaviour in sectors where it has noted tax compliance problems, in order to verify whether tax behaviour has improved.

In line with the guidelines of the Tax Control Plan of previous years and those approved for the 2020 financial year, with these coordinated sectoral operations - with Scarpe II there are already 19 in recent years in various sectors of activity -, in addition to facilitating the detection and regularization of tax fraud, the Tax Agency also seeks to convey a dissuasive message to the groups involved in these practices, which have an impact on public coffers and seriously distort competition in the sector itself.