HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) foiled a suspected £165m VAT carousel fraud last week by joining forces with its German counterpart.
Mixed teams of UK and German Customs officers were deployed on the Swiss/German border and at Frankfurt airport to gather intelligence about the movement of a large mobile phone consignment.
During the operation – codenamed Operation Sunrise – more than 30,000 mobiles were scanned and logged in HMRC’s Nemesis database. Serial numbers were compared with others on the database to confirm the attempted fraud.
Carole Upshall, HMRC Detection senior manager, said: “Tracking commodities that are to be used to make fraudulent VAT claims across EU [European Union] borders is only one part of our strategy, but it is an example of the international co-operation that allows us to tackle fraud.”
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