Germany to launch second wave of tax fraud probes
German tax authorities are to launch a new wave of 20 separate tax evasion investigations in the next two weeks, a press report said Friday, after a first push netted hundreds of millions of euros.
The probes would mainly concern people in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, and would focus on family foundations suspected of being used to hide between 10-20 million euros (15-30 million dollars) of embezzled money, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported, citing an unnamed investigator.
Since late March, there have been about 30 raids, with 120 residences and offices searched, the newspaper said.
German tax evasion recently came into the spotlight as authorities launched a nationwide probe, netting more than 100 suspects including Klaus Zumwinkel, the former head of the logistics giant Deutsche Post, which owns DHL.
Most of those cases involved Germans allegedly avoiding payment of taxes by shifting funds to the alpine tax haven of Liechtenstein.
On Friday, Sueddeutsche Zeitung said authorities had recovered about 500 million euros from about 200 people who came forward on their own.
The government acknowledged in February that it had paid more than four million euros to an informer for bank data that led to the biggest tax fraud probe ever in the country and sparked similar investigations around the globe.
Another 230 people not related to the Liechtenstein affair have also contacted authorities after they too neglected to pay taxes, the report said.
Bochum prosecutors planned to start bringing charges against suspects within a few months, and were likely to bring charges against Zumwinkel later this year, it added.
