Operation Spider, a raid carried out in the provinces of Ankara, İstanbul, Bursa, Gaziantep and Balıkesir, found that the company cost the state TL 17 million in unpaid private consumption taxes (ÖTV).
The Customs Undersecretariat said on Monday that the operation was carried out jointly by custom officials and police forces. Operation Spider is the continuation of a similar previous raid named Operation Scissors, which was carried out in Ankara.
Having recently concentrated their investigation on the Ankara-based firm, customs officials uncovered a number of false reports. The company, which was not named, previously imported 18,000 tons of mineral oil and delivered it to its Ankara facility. It later sold this oil to fuel oil dealers in various provinces. With an increase in the frequency and magnitude of the investigations, customs officials found that the company had prepared false reports to evade police investigations in these provinces. Because the tax on mineral oil is relatively low, some fuel distributors and gas stations add these cheaper oil products to fuel. The distributors later sell these oil products as fuel additives.
Customs Undersecretary Neşet Akkoş told reporters in Ankara on Monday that they had commenced legal proceedings against 14 workers at the Ankara-based company along with 17 customs officials who had signed the false reports.
Located at a nexus of smuggling routes, Turkey has for many years fought fuel smuggling, which is widely considered the biggest source of financing for terrorist activities in the country after drug trafficking. The government earlier warned that it would hand out high penalties to wrongdoers. Estimates place the state’s loss from tax evasion in fuel and gas sales at up to TL 600 million per year.
It is estimated that the quantity of mineral oil, including base oil and machine oil, sold in the domestic markets in one year is close to 800,000 tons. However, as the actual need for mineral oil is at most 500,000 tons a year, the remaining 300,000 tons are thought to be sold mixed with fuels.
