The main defendants come from the Hells Angels milieu: confusion as a principle, gold deals, missing millions and rockers. Sounds like a mystery, and it is. After investigations by the Hamburg tax investigation department, four men were arrested and charged with tax evasion amounting to 27 million euros. SPIEGEL researched the matter and presented the sophisticated business model in a video and explained the suspected VAT fraud.
The full Spiegel report can be viewed here.
The Spiegel report names the accused and some of their companies. We took this as an opportunity to search for any anomalies in the network of these gentlemen. Within a few minutes, we used our Palturai BusinessGraph to reconstruct the facts from the report and also discovered a number of other “interesting connections”. If only the journalists had asked us…
But what is the background?
According to the investigations of the Hamburg tax investigation department, the men are said to have procured precious metals worth 80 million euros from “nebulous sources” and brought them to Berlin. In order to make the journey of the metals appear legal, the men are said to have set up a dummy company in Hamburg that issued fake documents. This is said to have made it appear as if the raw materials had been legally purchased from a company in Slovakia. However, undercover investigations revealed that there had never been any business with the Slovakian company in question. An interesting detail: two of the suspects are said to have known each other from the Foreign Legion.
Who is it about?
The defendant D. F. is a member of the Hells Angels and their spokesman. The second defendant A. S. was, according to a Spiegel report, a former member of the Hells Angels and has already been convicted of tax evasion. Both are linked to B. GmbH, firstly as managing director and secondly as owner of the company.