2023-11-12 08:00:43
Barcelona 41 of the 50 investigations processed last year by the financial crimes service of the Barcelona Public Prosecutor’s Office were for crimes against the Public Treasury. 82% of the total. In most cases it is fraud in the payment of personal income tax, an uncommon crime until a few years ago, but which is now the most frequent type of fraud, even ahead of that of the VAT and Corporation Tax. Although the majority of the cases brought to trial ended in conviction (only 26% of the cases were acquitted), the public administration recovered only half of the defrauded money.
In particular, 14.3 million euros were recovered through the criminal process from the 27 who had defrauded themselves by not paying the tax that belonged to them. According to the person in charge of the economic crimes service of the Barcelona Public Prosecutor’s Office, Carmen Martín, this money arrived as a result of a pact of conformity between the authors of the tax fraud and the accusations. In this type of agreement, the convicted acknowledge the facts and pay the defrauded fees in exchange for a reduced sentence. And this ensures the return of the money to the public treasury. Which does not happen in sentences without conformity if the convicted person declares himself insolvent.
delays
Despite the guarantee of recouping the money involved in compliance judgments, sometimes the Prosecutor’s Office is forced to seek this type of agreement because of the time it takes for the cases to reach trial. Many times the fraud is not detected the same exercise that it has been committed, but when the Treasury makes the corresponding inspection. Then the body must make its report (it can take up to two more years) and to this must be added the time that the criminal investigation lasts. Which translates in many cases into an attenuator of undue delays.
“We cannot find a solution to identify some cases more quickly”, points out Martín, who explains that these delays may end up translating into a reduction that places the final penalties in a few months in prison for older cases that have taken longer to judge- se, which will also see the initial fines that could be applied to them reduced to 25%.
Although the Treasury only recovered half of the money defrauded by criminal means in 2022, this record exceeds that of the previous year. In 2021, only 10 of the 46 million defrauded returned to the public treasury.
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