The General Directorate of Customs (DGA) has detected underinvoicing maneuvers in 523 shipment permits for the export of beef which made possible an evasion of US$ 11,908,320 in the period 2021-2022with around 22 exporting refrigerators involved.
According to a report compiled by the DGA, most of the exports went to China, Chile and Brazil as final destinations and the operations were re-invoiced through traders with no economic substance in Cyprus, Uruguay, Switzerland and the United States.
The discovered maneuver consists in the fact that after the shipment of the goods from Argentina to Brazil, a trader from Cyprus or the United States intervenes and re-invoice the operation “without adding anything to the final product, but adds a 30% ‘commission’ to the deal“.
“This difference is an irregular utility of the Argentine refrigerator, which leave it abroad so as not to pay the dollars to the Central Bank (BCRA) and to reduce export duties and evade income tax,” they added from the customs.
The detection of irregularities arises from the various information exchange agreements to which the DGA has adhered together with other foreign customs, such as the Indira-Customs Registries Information Exchange System for Mercosur.
Through Indira, the customs received information on all meat exports with Chile and Brazil, while “orders to European countries (Hilton share) and all operations with China are already being processed through the bilateral agreement with that country,” according to the report.
In 2022, $3,493 million in meat exports were registered in customsand 80% of operations are concentrated in the five main destination countries (China, Germany, Israel, Chile and Holland).
The “exporter’s tour” with the preserved cow
On the other hand, the organization has detailed the types of cow exported from Argentina and the different qualities, warning normal cow passage “exporter circuit” “C” for conserved or “old” cows D and E; this is “exporting old cows but charging for ordinary cows”, it was stressed.
The study underlines that passing off a normal cow “C” as an old or preserved cow “D and E” – which is exported completely to China – generates a double advantage because they not only skip the Senasa checks, but also allows them to increase under-invoicing since the price of the “old cow” is rightly lower than that of the normal cow.
“Slaughterhouses have raised export records of ‘old cow’ to 12,000 tonnes (tn) in an average month, when the normal would have been seven thousand; the survey indicates that in fact these five thousand extra are normal ‘C’ cows ” , emphasized by the DGA.
Along these lines, they contemplated that “besides under-invoicing exports and leaving dollars overseas without clearance by the BCRA, refrigerators deplete the local market.”
The refrigerators under the magnifying glass of the customs and on which “red channel alerts for the export of sea urchins with ‘old cow'” have already been generated are Login Food (550 tons per month on average), Recreo (800 tons) , Ruyi (700 tons), Procesadora Ganadera Entre Ríos (650 tons), Frigorífico Alberdi (430 tons) and Black Bamboo (350 tons), according to the survey.
In early January, a DGA report said that in the second half of 2022, the charges and penalties levied for these maneuvers rose to $1,018.4 million, an increase of 667% from the previous six months.
With information from Telam
DB extension
Source: Clarin
