Informant’s tipoff revealed customs scam

An informant’s tipoff successful August 2024 led, 10 months later, to what has been called the biggest-ever seizure of containers successful the EU, astatine the larboard of Piraeus.

The informant, who remains anonymous, told his interlocutor, a National Intelligence Service officer, astir an illicit trade cognition centered connected Piraeus’ Customs Office C, with a 61-year-old customs serviceman astatine its head.

The accusation was passed on to the police’s Organized Crime Division, besides dubbed “Greece’s FBI,” which began to investigate.

At some point, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office asked for the lawsuit record and took implicit the investigation, since the illicit trade included respective different EU countries and it was deemed that the tax evasion harmed not lone Greece but the EU arsenic a whole; Italian constabulary had besides begun investigating related illicit enactment successful the larboard of Bari.

The result: 8 customs officers and employees charged, raids connected the suspects’ residences, companies and the customs bureau premises, and 2,435 containers seized.

What the National Intelligence Service conveyed to constabulary was an elaborate strategy that falsified either the contented of the containers oregon the provenance of the goods successful bid to wage little taxes: for example, electrical bikes were declared arsenic spare parts and containers loaded successful China were falsely declared arsenic originating successful different EU countries.

The customs pack was utilizing 10 ammunition companies and 9 storage spaces successful the West Attica town of Aspropyrgos, where the goods remained until the mendacious invoices were issued, allowing their export to different EU members oregon home distribution.

The illicit traders included a 67-year-old Greek national nicknamed “Uncle” and a Chinese nationalist known arsenic “Spencer.”