Investigators uncovered an attempt to steal a billion rubles from the Russian budget through an illegal VAT refund. provides details of the activities of the criminal group The newspaper Kommersant in its issue dated February 22.

The Main Directorate of Economic Security and Anti-Corruption of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports the arrest of four suspects in the case of embezzlement of budget funds: the organizer of the scheme, Evgeniy Ignatiev, who was already wanted, and three active participants - Ilya Budnyansky, Oleg Kabanov and Alexander Kruchinin. According to the investigation, the suspects, using their connections in the Federal Tax Service, tried to illegally return value added tax using fictitious documents. During the investigation, it was possible to stop an attempt to illegally reimburse 500 million rubles, and in total the attackers intended to steal about a billion rubles, the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported, based on the seized documents. A criminal case was initiated under part three of Article 30 (attempted crime) and part four of Article 159 (fraud on an especially large scale) of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.

During the investigation, which lasted more than a year, it was established that, starting in 2008, the suspects registered shell companies that did not conduct real activities. By falsifying documents about the alleged turnover of goods, the criminals then sent demands to the tax authorities for reimbursement of value added tax for unsold goods. Then the process developed according to one of two scenarios. If it was possible to “agree” with the tax inspectorate employees, then the allegedly overpaid tax was returned after a superficial check. In case of refusal, the suspects challenged the decision in the arbitration court, where they provided the results of the “correct” counter tax audit, after which the court took the side of the plaintiffs.

Earlier in 2012, as part of the same investigation, the Basmanny Court of Moscow found the head of the cameral department of the Moscow Federal Tax Service No. 7, Yulia Gostevaya, guilty of fraud and sentenced her to five years in a general regime colony. Ignatiev, who was put on the wanted list, was also involved in the same case. Gostevaya’s lawyers told the Rosbalt agency that their client could not independently make decisions on tax refunds and the management of the inspectorate could have been involved in the criminal scheme. The Moscow City Court later upheld the verdict.

The Ministry of Internal Affairs uncovered tax thefts worth a billion