Customs is simultaneously carrying out raids in 20 financial entities to investigate the financial loop maneuver where alleged false companies use the exchange gap to make use of the official dollar.
Customs-AFIP —complaint in the criminal case of aggravated smuggling, evasion and asset laundering—, with the collaboration of the National Gendarmerie, carried out simultaneous raids in 20 financial entities to obtain information and documentation related to irregular foreign trade operations, purchases , sales and currency transfers made by 46 companies and 13 individuals involved in the operation.
The investigated maneuver is the well-known “financial loop”, where companies —without economic substance and falsifying documentation— made transfers to LLC companies incorporated in the state of Florida (USA) to get dollars at the official value and then sell them in the blue market.
The file investigates 233 transfers abroad for about USD 5.3 million, an average of USD 22,500 per transfer to try to go “under the radar”.
The concepts used were “B05 – Advance payments for imports of goods” and “B06 – Deferred payments for imports of goods” and were justified with false imports of computers and TV screens. Couriers were even used with trout invoices.
The criminal case is filed in the Economic Criminal Court Nº2, in charge of Dr. Pablo Yadarola, and the Criminal and Economic Prosecutor Nº2, Emilio Gerberoff, is acting. The cause is processed under summary secrecy.
Within the 46 legal persons, in addition to the 4 false import companies that made transfers abroad, real estate and investment companies that were used to launder the profits of the financial loop are investigated.
The prosecutor’s office requested a series of PRECAUTIONARY MEASURES to ensure the registrable assets, bank accounts and financial assets, such as the preventive seizure of the accounts and the general inhibition of assets of those involved.
As a plaintiff in the criminal case, and just as it did in the NRG case, Customs activated the use of information exchange agreements with the US to obtain the names of the attorneys for the bank accounts of LLC companies of said country.
“From Customs we understand that the controls that the banks’ COMEX account executives should have carried out should have been more rigorous and as plaintiffs in the case we are going to ask to investigate each of the folders that the companies presented to the banks to request the transfer abroad, the crossing of calls of each branch manager and the assets of the employees of the banks that participated in the operations”, said Guillermo Michel, general director of Customs, who added: “Currently, the Current Account The only one of Foreign Trade that incorporated the SIRA brought order to foreign trade and allows state agencies to control money transfers abroad in real time, giving greater traceability to the operation”.
Finally, Michel pointed out that Customs is analyzing similar maneuvers for USD 700 million, which do not have the support of foreign trade operations.
Recently, Justice raided stock companies after a complaint from AFIP-Customs that detected that a company that operates with Vaca Muerta inflated values to enter imported goods and made a “loop” with funds that returned to the country and ended up liquidated in the CCL, a slightly more sophisticated case than Mitchel mentions. In this way, the Government has been strengthening with the different organizations such as the National Securities Commission, AFIP and Customs.
Source: Ambito
