Criminal investigators from the Criminal Police Directorate of the Celje Police Directorate have completed a long-running and extensive investigation of economic crime offences and filed a criminal complaint with the competent stateprosecutor's office for 18 offences of abuse of position in the performance of economic activity, tax evasion, money laundering and forgery of documents.
Criminal Investigators from Celje uncovered a network of over fifteen Slovenian and foreign companies that caused a financial loss to the Slovenian Budget and other companies.
The initial suspicion of criminal activity was detected by the employees of the Financial Administration of the Republic of Slovenia (FURS), who informed the criminal investigators from Celje about their findings. The pre-trial proceedings lead by the Specialised State Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Slovenia (SDT) started in autumn 2022. Due to the complexity and extensiveness of the case, the prosecutor's office set up a specialised investigation team, in which the criminal investigators from Celje were joined by criminal investigators from Novo mesto, Ljubljana and Maribor and representatives of the Financial Administration and other competent institutions.
The complexity of the pre-trial proceedings was largely due to the complex nature of the analysis of how seemingly illogical financial transactions carried out in a network of over fifteen companies linked by ownership and management in different EU countries were actually connected.
The investigators discovered that the suspects were using over 15 companies associated by ownership and management in a planned and organised manner to carry out the offences between 2018 and 2021, through illogical financial transactions, issuance of fake invoices and the statements of mutually connected and internationally linked cash flows. Moreover, the suspects also filled for payment of exit VAT with the Slovenian Financial Administration for these transactions, which meant direct illegal proceeds for the perpetrators.
On the grounds of all the gathered information and evidence criminal charges for the alleged offences were brought against two legal entities and eleven natural persons from the area of Police Directorates Celje, Ljubljana, Maribor and Novo mesto, and four natural persons from abroad at the end of last year. The majority of other legal persons involved had been struck-off the business register of Slovenia before the criminal complaint was filed.
The suspects acquired over €2 million in illegal proceeds with the criminal activity.
In accordance with the provisions of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Slovenia the offences in question are punishable with imprisonment sentences i.e. imprisonment for one to eight years for both, the offence of abuse of position or trust in economic activity under Article 240 of the Criminal Code, and the offence tax evasion under Article 249 of the Criminal Code, imprisonment for up to five years for money laundering under Article 245 of the Criminal Code, and maximum two years imprisonment for forgery or destruction of documents under Article 235 of the Criminal Code.