After being found guilty by the Federal Supreme Court as the operator of the Mensalao scandal in Lula’s first government, journalist Marcos Valerio returned to the center of investigations on Tuesday, where he became the target of an operation by the Inter-Institutional Asset Recovery Commission of Minas Gerais (Cira-MG), which is investigating a tax evasion and money laundering scheme. Cira has the Public Ministry among its constituent entities.
The scheme could have transferred millions of riyals through companies in the wholesale sector and supermarket chains in the state. The investigation indicates that among them is the “Coelho Diniz” chain, which has a strong presence in the state of Minas Gerais. The company is the largest individual shareholder of Grupo Paõ de Açúcar, owning 24.6% of common shares (with voting rights).
Operation Ambiente 186 reports that those involved in the scheme failed to collect more than R$215 million in ICMS, leaving a huge hole in Minas Gerais’ public coffers.
According to the Public Prosecution, the motive behind this action was to identify an organized scheme to defraud tax payments. Entrepreneurs and employees of retail and wholesale companies are being investigated for criminal organization, disinformation and money laundering.
Investigations were conducted over a period of 18 months and indicate that the group created fake companies to simulate the buying and selling of goods. He would also falsify tax information to simulate interstate operations, a strategy that allowed him to pay less than ICMS or simply not pay the tax owed.
Fraud may involve both ICMS itself and the ICMS Tax Replacement System (ICMS-ST), which is mandatory prepayment for certain sectors.
According to the authorities, the evasion led to an artificial reduction in costs, enabling the companies concerned to sell products at prices lower than those charged by competitors who comply with their tax obligations. The difference was converted into profit and later “laundered” through purchases of luxury cars, acquisitions on behalf of third parties and commercial transactions.
Search and seizure warrants
During the operation, search and seizure warrants were executed in the Belo Horizonte metropolitan area and in the central-western state of Minas Gerais. The teams searched the company’s headquarters and the homes of businessmen and employees.
Mobile phones, computers, digital media, documents and luxury vehicles were confiscated. The court also decided that assets worth R$476,000 were unavailable to prevent the persons under investigation from disposing of the assets.
This procedure mobilized a large working group: six prosecutors, three delegates from the civil police, 58 auditors from the State Revenue Service, two auditors from the Federal Revenue Service, 65 military police officers, 54 civil police officers, nine military firefighters, and 15 public prosecutors participated.
Cira-MG, created in 2007, is a national reference in the fight against tax evasion and asset recovery. The committee, formed by the Ministry of Public and State Revenue, the State Prosecutor’s Office, the Civil Police and the Military Police, has contributed to the recovery of more than R$16 billion to the coffers of the state of Minas Gerais.