71 business leaders tried in $2.6B VAT fraud case

The People’s Court of Phu Tho is set to trial the accused over 10 days for their creation and trading of one million fake VAT invoices of VND64 trillion (US$2.63 billion) worth of products.

68 of them are charged with buying or selling invoices illegally, 30 with tax evasion, and two with both crimes along with making counterfeit seals and using counterfeit documents.

The prosecutors alleged that Nguyen Minh Tu, 30, was the mastermind in the VAT fraud scheme.

Tu told his three subordinates to buy almost 650 companies online and used them to create VAT invoices with false information.

In his 22 months of operation, Tu sold over 1 million of these invoices to 88,000 businesses and earned VND294 billion illegally from them.

The buyers were mostly company leaders who bought goods from unauthorized manufacturers with no proof of origin. They therefore asked Tu to help make their invoices legal.

He also allegedly used 32 fake seals of many provinces and government organizations to approve various documents.