Romanian food distributor owners, charged with EUR 12 mln tax dodging

Prosecutors of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) detained Mihai Cristian Darmanescu and Florin Daniel Nistor, associates and administrators of local food distributor Alfredo Foods, for tax dodging. They are charged with tax evasion worth EUR 12 million, according to a DIICOT release. Prosecutors also detained two other people in the same file. They will take the four to the Bucharest Court to ask for their preventive arrest for 30 days. The prosecutors also investigate several people under judicial control. According to DIICOT, representatives of Alfredo Fresh and Alfredo Foods organized between 2009 and 2010 a criminal group together with several others, and avoided paying taxes for the two companies. The crime ring used tens of phantom companies, which were active for short periods of time, and which active as the middle link between EU suppliers and the real beneficiaries, Alfredo Fresh and Alfredo Foods. These companies' headquarters were either formal, set up in their lawyers' headquarters, or were non-existent. They had no employees and and were not active at their social headquarters. The companies were set up using the names of people hard to identify, either foreigners, or sometimes people close to the Alfredo group shareholders, according to DIICOT. editor@romania-insider.com