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Dark Side Last Updated: Jul 24, 2014 - 9:21:50 AM


The Rumanian Veggie Scam
By Romana Puiulet, Daniel Bojin, and Oksana Faryna, OCCRP July 23 2014
Jul 24, 2014 - 9:18:55 AM

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Svitlana Ogulenko says she is scared to death.

"My God, I work as a yard keeper. I have an adopted child, I pay my bills on time and I never did anything illegal. Could you explain how this will end for me? I have a feeling that the police will come and take me soon."
the Ukrainian citizen told reporters in March 2013.

Although the 47-year-old lives in Ukraine’s Odessa region, she is, according to company records, the administrator and shareholder of a Romanian vegetable trading company called Albutz Com Ltd. The company owes almost €1 million (US$ 1.29 million) to the Romanian state in unpaid taxes.

Like others involved in this “vegetable” scheme, Ogulenko says she knows nothing about the company and has never been involved in any of its business.

Her identity was used without her knowledge, and she is not alone.

Six other women from the same Ukrainian region also “owned” companies and some of them owed huge amounts of taxes – something they say they learned only when they were summoned to appear before Romanian courts.

Recruiting Workers in Odessa, Ukraine

Reporters for the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) followed the documents in Ogulenko’s case to the family home in Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi - an ancient port on the Black Sea.

Her husband, Viacheslav Ogulenko, was clearly irritated when he answered the door. "We do not have any business in Romania," he said. "Svitlana never sold vegetables. We don't have any vegetable business. It is not the first time we were asked about this. I think in the spring of 2012 we got a letter from Romania, but we threw it away."

That letter was a notification from Romanian authorities trying to recover the debt incurred by Albutz Com Ltd, a vegetable trading company.

"Damn, is that our company or what?" Viacheslav Ogulenko asked rhetorically. Since they had nothing to do with the case, he said, “why should we spend money to go to some court in Romania?”

His wife was not at home, but spoke with OCCRP via phone a few weeks later. "Back in 2008, I saw an ad in a newspaper which said they needed cleaning workers in Romania,” she recalled. The pay was excellent—about US$ 2,000 for a month’s work. “I desperately needed money to renovate my house. So I decided to apply. I was contacted very quickly and then (was) helped to get a visa in just a few hours," she recalled.

Ogulenko said she travelled by train to Bucharest. At the train station, “a person who introduced himself as a lawyer welcomed me and told me I would go into a six-month work program in Romania, and then another six months back at home, and so on. In order to get into the program, he asked me to sign some documents and I gave him my real address and real data. The papers were in Romanian, so I didn't understand what was written there. I think that, instead of signing a labour contract, I signed something else, without even realizing it."

Reporters for OCCRP found a copy of Ogulenko's passport attached to the file of Albutz Com Ltd at the Romanian registry of companies. The copy shows that she entered Romania by train on 20 August 2008. Ogulenko remained in Romania for 40 days and was paid US$ 2,000, as she had said. On September 30, 2008, the company started its vegetable-trading activities.
The Notary

The reporters tracked down the paperwork showing how the people behind Albutz Com Ltd used Ogulenko's identity.
link

Sahin Yuksek, one of the leaders of Turkish clans in the fruit and vegetable business (Photo RISE Project)

According to documents seen by OCCRP, in September 2008 the Ukrainian woman was brought to the Chiras & Constantinescu public notary office in Bucharest where she signed a stack of papers that were used to establish the new Romanian commercial enterprise

Ogulenko said she and several other women had been to the notary office, but repeated she had no idea what she was signing. The paperwork appears to be certified by Bianca Octavia Chiraş, one of the partners in the notary firm. Chiraş declined several requests to talk to OCCRP.

Several other women from near Odessa visited the same office, for the same reason: to establish fruit and vegetable trading businesses headquartered in Voluntari, a small town near the Romanian capital.

Two of them, Olena Korpusova and Svitlana Kaimakova, were there on the same day as Ogulenko, in order to give statements for two other companies in Voluntari. Reporters visited the addresses listed for the women but found no one who knew them.

The Courier

Here’s how the tax evasion scheme worked, according to OCCRP’s investigation: companies were established in the names of the Ukrainian women but the power of attorney remained with a group of Turkish citizens who ran the companies. Some of the companies ran up huge tax debts, and when tax officials came calling, all they found were the Ukrainian women.

All necessary documents were signed and notarized at the Chiras & Constantinescu notary office.

A Romanian citizen was the link between the notary's office, the Ukrainian women and the Turkish group behind the enterprise.

Viorel Tilincă, 52, said in a phone conversation with an OCCRP reporter that he was an employee of the notary office and ran errands for many years between the Turks and the office. One of the people involved was Sahin Yuksek, a Turkish citizen investigated for tax evasion together with other members of his family.

"I’ve known Sahin Yuksek since 1993,” Tilincă said. “I have also worked with other Turkish men, but I don't know how many in total. I don't keep track of them. I was only empowered to submit some documents or go to deposit money for the registered capital, when new firms were created. Do you think they were telling me what they did with these companies?

"I have been also interrogated by prosecutors about these companies. They asked how did I get to know the Turks. But there was nothing else I could tell them, because I was just a courier. It's not my business what they did with these companies."
Tilincă told OCCRP reporters.

It was Tilincă who handled the company belonging to Olena Korpusova, the woman who had been at the notary office on the same day as Ogulenko.
Neighbors in Voluntari

Ogulenko’s company, Albutz Com Ltd, was physically located in a rented 14-square-meter garage in Voluntari, just outside Bucharest. The garage was rented from a Romanian citizen, Marin Răducanu, who signed a contract with Ogulenko.

Răducanu says he is not happy about any of this. "I have never seen this woman from Ukraine. A Romanian I met in the green market said he wanted me to rent this garage to him to make an office there. I don't remember his name. But after that I've had all sorts of trouble with the authorities. I saw that the documents of my house appeared in the file of this company, documents I have never given to him. This really (annoys me)."
Rencuzogullari family's yard is stuck to the garage belonging to the company in trouble (Photo Rise Project) (view image)

Răducanu's garage is located just next to the property of Yuksel Rencuzogullari, a 43-year-old Turkish citizen, who is from Samandag, Turkey, the same town where Sahin Yuksek is from.

Georgiana Rencuzogullari, Yuksel's wife, denied any involvement in the fraud.

Recuzogullari was also a client of the same notary office and Tilincă also submitted paperwork on his behalf. Said Tilincă, "I do not keep track of these companies. Ask Yuksel. My job was to fulfil my mandate and that was it. Look for the link between Yuksel and Abbas Yuksek". Abbas Yuksek is Sahin Yuksek's brother and was also charged with tax evasion in October 2012.

At Yuksel Rencuzogullari’s home, his wife, Georgiana Rencuzogullari, denied any involvement in the fraud. "We don't want to be involved in this affair. We were also called by DNA prosecutors” (DNA is the National Anticorruption Directorate) “and we told them everything we knew. My husband is away in Turkey, where he has his business. Occasionally he comes to Romania. But I cannot give you his contact data, because we have nothing to do with this story."

And yet another property in Voluntari that belongs to Georgiana Rencuzogullari is listed as their home address by at least three of the Turkish citizens investigated for tax evasion.

 

Crooks Steal the Money, While Refugees Pay the Price

The crime, according to prosecutors, was tax evasion by companies importing food to Romania. But there was a new wrinkle in the scheme – set up refugees to take the blame when the crimes were discovered.

The man who made this possible in Romania was Mohamad Al Dulaimi, working with a network of Turkish fraudsters perpetrating a similar scheme.

An Iraqi citizen, Al Dulaimi is currently jailed in Bucharest, serving a four-year term. But prosecutors say that between 2004 and 2008 he headed an illicit network that brought hundreds of Iraqis to Romania where some of them were used as front men for tax fraud.

Al Dulaimi denies it all, saying he was simply helping fellow countrymen escape intolerable conditions in war-torn Iraq.

Prosecutors, however, tell a very different story. They say the Al Dulaimi network placed Iraqi migrants as “straw men” at Romanian companies.They say the scam worked like this: the actual owners of the companies ran up huge tax debts, and when tax authorities came looking for the missing money, they found the companies headed by Iraqi immigrants who in many cases claim they had no idea what was going on.

This scam involving companies with clueless owners was repeated many times. Romanian authorities estimate that in 2012 the tax evasion reached no less than €14 billion (US$ 18 billion).

Reporters from OCCRP interviewed some of the people involved, and discovered that the Al Dulaimi network functioned in cooperation with a second network run by Turkish citizens. The two sets of criminals communicated with each other and helped create even more complex tax evasion schemes.


From Bucharest to Samandag, Turkey

Connections to the Turkish network can be traced through one of the biggest scams, involving companies that belonged on paper to Iraqi citizen Morad Ahmed and to “AB,” an innocent Swedish citizen of Iranian origin who requested anonymity.

Morad Ahmed told OCCRP he signed what he thought was immigration paperwork, not knowing the papers named him as the owner of various companies. AB never set foot in Romania but his stolen passport was used to establish or take over about 70 companies in the Eastern European country.

One of these companies was Lonelia Com SRL, trading vegetables and fruit from Turkey. It was transferred on Aug. 7, 2008, to the names of AB and Morad Ahmed together with its massive debt to the state, € 15.6 million (US$ 21 million) in unpaid taxes.

Following the money, OCCRP reporters discovered that the company was involved in an elaborate tax evasion scheme rooted in Samandag, a Turkish town near the Syrian border.

Over the last two years, more than half of the fruit and vegetables market in Romania was controlled by Turkish groups from Samandag region. (view image)

The reporters travelled to Samandag after searches in the Romanian registry of companies indicated that hundreds of people from Samandag had come to Romania to establish fruit and vegetable trading companies.

The streets in the Turkish town of 30,000 were full of cars with Romanian license plates, and many Turkish residents spoke Romanian, although the town is 1,700 km (about 1,000 miles) away from Bucharest.

Romania is a big consumer of Turkish fruit and vegetables and the trade between Samandag and Bucharest is significant.
The Scheme

In just three months, the Lonelia Com SRL company ran up a tax debt to the Romanian government of € 15.6 million (US$ 21 million).

That debt was incurred right before the company was transferred on paper to AB and Morad Ahmed. Tax investigators charged the two with tax evasion as owners of the company.

In addition to the ownership shift, the schemers also moved the company to fictitious headquarters, possibly to avoid fiscal control.

The paperwork to change the address was handled by Andreea Ioana Oțel, a Romanian woman, who went to the registry to record the new headquarters armed with a power of attorney signed by Morad Ahmed, who insists he didn’t know what he was signing.

Oțel was a long-time collaborator of a lawyer from Bucharest, Nicoleta Bucur. The two also dealt with the Iraqi who made illegal use of AB's passport.

"We don't represent a person but a company at the Companies' Registry," she said. "If you submit documents to the Companies Registry it doesn't mean that you know what they are doing with that company. You can't recognize if that's a fake passport or the photo was changed."
Oțel told OCCRP she had no way of knowing anything was amiss.

According to documents, the fruits and vegetables imported from Turkey by Lonelia Com were sent to two other companies: Stil Can SRL and MeryFruct SRL.

These two companies were also established by Turkish businessmen from Samandag and then transferred, in August 2008, to Morad Ahmed and AB.

Stil Can SRL was controlled by Ayhan Yuksek(P10), a member of an important Turkish family in Samandag. His brothers, Sahin and Abbas Yuksek, are involved in several corruption and tax evasion court cases in Bucharest.

The Yuksek Family

The three Yuksek brothers have a complicated criminal history in Romania involving allegations of bribery, forgery, tax and import fraud.
Sahin Yuksek, brought in handcuffs to the corruption case hearing. (view image)

Sahin Yuksek, 41, was sentenced in October 2013 for trying to bribe a high official of the Romanian tax authority. Sahin Yuksek attempted to pay a € 40,000 (US$ 55,000) bribe to change the results of a fiscal authority’s audit at his Yuksek International Fruit company, which owed almost US$10 million in taxes.

Prosecutors say that initially, Sahin Yuksek used Turkish citizen Akram Mustafa Naser, a fruit and vegetable trader, as a stand-in for paying the bribe. Police arrested Naser on April 19, 2013 but he cooperated with the investigation and received a three-month suspended jail sentence for his role in the bribery case.

The same day Naser was arrested, anti-corruption officers arrested Sahin Yuksek.

The Bucharest Court of Appeal sentenced Sahin Yuksek to two and a half years.

Akram Naser, accused in bribery.

Reporters from OCCRP interviewed Sahin Yuksek after investigating his family's businesses in Samandag. He denied any involvement in fraudulent business in Romania.

Romanian authorities investigated the Yuksek brothers and Naser for more than two years on suspicion of tax evasion, according to a legal document obtained by OCCRP.

Starting in 2010, prosecutors monitored the commercial activities of the Yuksek family, believing the three brothers were declaring lower values for imported goods at customs by allegedly forging commercial and shipping documents without including them in the company's financial records.

A few days after he was arrested for bribery, SahinYuksek was indicted in another case. On April 25, 2013, prosecutors from the Terrorism and Organized Crime Investigation Unit (DIICOT) also charged Sahin and Ayhan Yuksek with large-scale tax evasion.

According to the prosecutors, the two got help from several accomplices. Romanian law enforcement raided no less than 42 locations, mostly companies' headquarters, in Bucharest and its surroundings.

The third Yuksek brother had already been investigated for tax evasion. In October 2012, Abbas Yuksek was accused of failing to declare hundreds of thousands of Euros, using companies that he controlled through proxies.

Investigators say the members of the Yuksek network were involved in another scheme where they used several women from Odessa, Ukraine, and fake Bulgarian passports.


Source:Ocnus.net 2014

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