Complaint for over-invoicing of US$ 14 million in imports for wind farms

The Dirección General de Aduanas (DGA) denounced an import over-invoicing maneuver for the installation of a wind farm in the north of the province of Santa Cruz, amounting to US$ 14 million. The criminal case is being processed in the Federal Court of Caleta Olivia and arose after Customs detected irregularities in the importation of 27 complete wind generators from Germany for the installation of the wind farm. The Customs requested information from its German counterpart and, based on the documentation submitted by the office of crimes of the customs service of that country, "a substantial difference between the declared values" was found, said the agency headed by Guillermo Michel in a statement. "While the documentation presented in Argentina assured that the amount of the import reached US$ 46 million, the information provided by Germany showed that it had been carried out for 27 million euros (equivalent to US$ 32 million), a difference of over-invoicing of US$ 14 million", it specified. In addition, the German customs crime office reported that "surprisingly, after these operations the company was dissolved in that country", the DGA indicated. Customs denounced the Argentine company for aggravated smuggling and for the use of adulterated or apocryphal documents in the Federal Court of Caleta Olivia. Likewise, in its capacity as plaintiff, it reiterated the request for the indictment of the directors of the local company, and requested the preventive seizure of the wind farms to ensure the tax credit. Finally, the requested measures were brought to the attention of the Secretariat of Energy so that, within the framework of its competences, it may take administrative action against the company. Within this framework, the DGA informed that from the analysis of wind farm imports from 2017 to the present "it emerges that, out of US$ 1,856 million of wind farm imports, US$ 1,120 were operations re-invoiced from a third country, the equivalent of 60%". The main jurisdictions from where imports were re-invoiced were Denmark, Hong Kong, Germany and Uruguay (96%), the agency assured.(Télam)