The 470 million economic case behind the "sale of gold"
China News Weekly reporter / Zhou Qunfeng
Published in the 1046th issue of "China News Weekly" on June 6, 2022
"Buy gold and sell it immediately at a loss", "claiming that the raw material of the product contains gold, but it is found that there is no gold content in it" "after the product is exported to Hong Kong, it is immediately treated as waste", this series of abnormal commercial Behind the operation, there is a cross-provincial economic crime gang.
Under the guise of trading in gold products, they used the method of "low-value high-reporting, fabricated and false reports" to defraud the state for export tax rebates and frantically falsely issue special VAT invoices.
After more than a year of meticulous investigation, the police in Mianyang City, Sichuan Province traveled to Sichuan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Shandong and other provinces, traveling tens of thousands of kilometers, to destroy the criminal gang in the whole chain.
At the end of April 2022, as the defendant Zhan Moudui and others were prosecuted by the procuratorial organs, it marked the completion of the case.
Jin Baolin, the main member of the task force and the instructor of the third team of the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Mianyang Public Security Bureau, participated in the investigation of the case throughout the whole process.
In an interview with "China News Weekly", he said that in this extraordinarily large case of fraudulently obtaining export tax rebates and falsely issuing special VAT invoices, many of the suspects were only junior high school graduates.
They lied about processing products with precious metals in order to increase the value of input commodities.
He said: "In two or three years, the criminal gang purchased about 1 ton of gold in total, sold it at a low price, and falsely issued 470 million VAT invoices. After the case was solved, the enterprises that purchased a large number of invoices made up for it. Taxes have been collected, and a total of more than 30 million yuan of economic losses have been recovered for the country.”
Spend tens of millions to buy gold and sell it at a loss
At the end of 2020, the taxation department of Mianyang City reported a clue to the Mianyang police: Sichuan Guobao Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Guobao Company") purchased gold in large quantities in a short period of time, claiming to use it as a raw material to produce export products, and applied for this. Export tax rebate.
During the inspection, the tax authority found that the products sold by the company did not contain any gold components, and there was an obvious mismatch between purchases and sales. The tax department was alerted and believed that the company was suspected of committing a crime of fraudulently obtaining export tax rebates.
According to relevant regulations, export tax rebate refers to the refund of value-added tax and consumption tax paid in various domestic production links and circulation links for goods declared for export in my country. Negative return to zero can effectively avoid the double taxation of international trade import and export of "paying taxes at home and paying customs duties abroad".
This can not only reduce the burden on enterprises, but also promote foreign trade.
Once the tax is refunded, large sums of money can be returned to the business account.
Some lawbreakers focus on this link, and defraud the state for export tax rebates by means of false export reports.
According to Tianyancha, Guojinbao was established on June 5, 2019, with a registered capital of 50 million yuan, and its legal representative is Jiao Mou.
The registered address is 3rd Floor, Building 2, Block C, Enterprise Accelerator, Entrepreneurship Service Center, Kechuang District, Mianyang City. Its business scope includes wholesale of building materials; manufacturing of semiconductor lighting devices; sales of electronic products; manufacturing of glasses; sales of gold and silver jewelry, etc.
Jiao Mou holds 100% of the shares.
After receiving the clues, the police from the Economic Investigation Detachment of the Mianyang Public Security Bureau immediately checked.
Jin Baolin said that after the police entered the company, they found that the company had stopped production.
The factory seems to be several hundred square meters.
From the appearance, it looks like a normal operating company, but the factory building is relatively simple, there are only some simple production equipment, the quality control is not strict, and it does not have the ability to produce qualified products.
The police investigation found that Jiao Mou was a man from Xi'an, Shaanxi Province. He and Jiang Mou'an (a man from Linhai City, Zhejiang Province) were jointly responsible for the operation of the company.
The company said to the public that gold was used in the raw materials of the two products (visual training instrument and inverter), which were both exported to a Chinese company in Hong Kong.
From September to November 2019, Guojinbao Company spent more than 10 million yuan to purchase a total of 41 kilograms of gold from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province three times on the grounds of production needs, and obtained a special input value-added tax invoice.
Jin Baolin introduced that in 2020, Guobao Company applied to the Sichuan tax department for export tax rebates for input items. Due to the strict control of the tax department, they failed to succeed.
After that, they went to a Shenzhen company to help export the product to Hong Kong, and applied for a part of the tax refund in Shenzhen.
"This quickly caught the attention of the Shenzhen tax department, who sent a letter suggesting that the Mianyang tax department should investigate the authenticity of the manufacturer," he said.
The police investigation learned that the boss of Guobao Company was Jiao Mou, but the actual controller behind it was Zhou Mouxin.
At the same time, Zhou Mouxin not only has a company in Shenzhen, but is also the actual controller of a certain Chinese company in Hong Kong.
This means that the so-called Guojinbao company exported its products to a certain Chinese company in Hong Kong, which is actually equivalent to that the product was transferred from Zhou Mouxin's left hand to his own right, and the purpose was to facilitate tax fraud.
In January 2021, the Mianyang Municipal Public Security Bureau decided to file a case for investigation into the crime of Zhou Mouxin, Jiao Mou and others suspected of defrauding export tax rebates, and established a special task force led by the Economic Investigation Detachment and the Fucheng District Public Security Branch Economic Investigation Brigade.
In order to find out the clues as soon as possible, the special team sent investigators to Shenzhen to start work on the flow of gold purchased from the company.
After Ji Baolin and other members of the task force arrived in Shenzhen, in order to find out the whereabouts of the funds, with the cooperation of the local public security organs, they interrogated all the suspects and investigated all relevant companies and individuals one by one. After more than a week of work , the task force investigated the flow of each of the above 41 kilograms of gold.
Jin Baolin said that after Guojinbao purchased the gold in Shenzhen, it did not transfer it to the company in Mianyang for production, but sold it on the spot in Shenzhen at a reduced price.
"Every time Jiao picks up gold from a warehouse in a jewelry market in Luohu District, Shenzhen, he sells it to a gold jewelry manufacturer or individual who does not need an invoice at a price of 3 to 5 cents per gram cheaper on the same day."
The gold purchased at a huge sum of money was immediately sold at a loss, and the abnormal business operation of Guojinbao Company attracted the attention of the police.
What's the secret behind this bizarre behavior?
"To Hong Kong to be disposed of as waste"
In March 2021, the task force decided to launch an arrest operation, and Jiang Mou'an, Zhou Mouxin, and Jiao Mou were arrested in Mianyang, Shenzhen, and Xi'an respectively.
The three were taken criminal compulsory measures by the public security organs for being suspected of fraudulently obtaining export tax rebates.
Jin Baolin said that at the beginning of the interrogation, the three suspects did not cooperate well at first, trying to get away with it. Later, as evidence was presented one by one, their psychological defense line gradually collapsed, and they explained the crime of defrauding them for export tax rebates.
After investigation, Zhou Mouxin is 48 years old and a native of Linhai City, Zhejiang Province. In June 2019, he conspired with Jiang Mou'an, a fellow countryman, and established Guojinbao Company in Mianyang with his friend Jiao Mou as the legal representative to produce training instruments and inverters. and other products for export to a Chinese company in Hong Kong.
Zhou Mouxin lives in Shenzhen all the year round, manages a technology company in Shenzhen, and conducts remote command of the operation of the Mianyang company and the Hong Kong company.
Jin Baolin said that Zhou Mouxin once did business in Xi'an, during which he met Jiao Mou, a local Xi'an, and later developed into a friendship, "Jiao Mou, in addition to being the owner of Guobao Company, is also responsible for extracting gold and selling it cheaply with several other people. things like gold."
Baolin said that during the police interrogation, the suspect explained that Guojinbao had recruited several workers to do some work on assembling visual training instruments and inverters.
Zhou Mouxin confessed that the vision training device has applied for a patent. There is a motor in it that carries an object containing light. The nearsighted person stares at one of the colored objects and turns the eyeball, which can correct the vision.
Mianyang police revealed that the above two products have no technical content and no practical significance, and their ingredients do not contain gold.
From October 2019 to March 2020, within 5 months, Zhou Mouxin declared the export tax rebate to the tax department on the grounds that the product was exported to Hong Kong, and obtained a total of more than 590,000 yuan of export tax rebate. The export tax rebate that has not been obtained is nearly 1 million yuan.
Jin Baolin said that the economic loss caused by the criminal suspects handling gold at a loss was only about 20,000 yuan, which is "very cost-effective" compared with the export tax rebates they defrauded.
Zhou Mouxin confessed that he and two accomplices born in the 1980s were both junior high school culture, and decided to take risks in order to make "big profits".
He said that they open companies, produce products, and do export trade to hide people's eyes and ears and improve the success rate of fraudulent tax rebates. "The simple production line of Guojinbao can't produce qualified visual training instruments and inverters. These low-cost and low-quality products are After the fake export trade method is transported to a Chinese company in Hong Kong, it will be treated as waste."
Several suspects confessed that they purchased 41 kilograms of physical gold for the sole purpose of obtaining special VAT invoices and then defrauding export tax rebates.
The reason for choosing gold is that it has a high input invoice when declaring tax rebates. They lied that gold is one of the raw materials for the production of commodities, and obtained a larger amount of tax rebate at high cost.
In order to get their money back, gold that has no practical use for them was sold quickly.
Follow the vines and lead out a major case of 470 million
Unexpectedly, the police handling the case found another important clue during the trial of the case: from September to December 2020, Zhou Mouxin, through his technology company in Shenzhen, asked another Shenzhen Technology Pigment Co., Ltd. (actual controller Zhan Moudui) bought "gold paste" as a guise, paid 4% of the "handling fee" of the other party, and obtained a total of 3.8 million yuan of falsely issued special VAT invoices from the pigment company, which was used to defraud export Tax refund required.
Jin Baolin said that the gold paste is made of gold after special treatment, and the shape is paste-like.
He said, "Zhou Mouxin and others have never bought gold paste from Zhan Moudui's company at all."
In order to combat the criminal gang, the task force went to Shenzhen again.
The police learned that Zhan Moudui was from Raoping County, Guangdong Province, with a junior high school education.
He, together with his junior high school classmate Xu, collected the "handling fee" from the companies receiving the ticket for others, and then issued special VAT invoices to downstream companies.
So far, a black chain of false VAT special invoices involving many parts of the country has surfaced.
On May 26, 2021, Zhan Moudui was arrested in Shenzhen.
After review, Zhan Moudui established two companies in Shenzhen in 2018, and with the help of his classmate Xu Mouwei, obtained the agent membership of the first-level member unit of the Shanghai Gold Exchange. A total of about 1 ton of gold was purchased several times.
After Zhan Moudui obtained a special VAT invoice, he entrusted Xu Mou to sell the physical gold to a gold jewelry manufacturer or individual who did not need an invoice at a price lower than the market price, and Xu Mou collected a "running fee" from it.
After investigation, since 2018, Zhan Moudui used the purchase of gold to obtain special VAT invoices for surplus, and then contacted him or introduced Xu Mouwei, Hu Mouming, Sun Mouyao and others, and successively contacted Guangdong, Guangxi, Fujian, Zhejiang, Some unscrupulous enterprises in Shandong and other places colluded and falsely issued special VAT invoices for the purchase of "gold paste, gold water pigment" and other commodities required for the production of ceramics and pigments without real transactions, and charged 4% to 8% of the face value. The "invoicing fee" varies, and the next enterprise will use it to declare and deduct tax in the tax department after obtaining false invoicing.
In the following two years, Zhan Moudui has falsely issued 900 special value-added tax invoices for 101 domestic manufacturers and enterprises, and the amount involved is as high as 470 million yuan, making tens of millions of profits.
Jin Baolin told China News Weekly that according to police investigations, the principals of the above-mentioned 101 manufacturers and enterprises are mainly engaged in the ceramics industry. Whether they are involved in crimes will be further investigated by the local public security organs. According to the process of obtaining invoices, and Whether they are suspected of committing a crime will be determined based on the principle of consistency between the subjective and objective. Those suspected of committing a crime will be investigated by the local public security organs.
He said: "Among them, some have been taken criminal compulsory measures by the local public security organs for suspected of falsely issuing special VAT invoices."
The police revealed that after Zhan Moudui was arrested, the task force went to Guangdong, Guangxi, Shandong, Zhejiang and other places successively to fix evidence on the enterprises involved, and urged the tax evasion enterprises to pay the value-added tax. A total of more than 30 million yuan in economic losses were recovered.
In November 2021, Xu Mou was arrested, Hu Mouming and Sun Mouyao took the initiative to come to the case, and the three withdrew more than 2 million yuan of illegal income.
At the end of April 2022, the defendants Zhan Moudui, Xu Mouwei, Hu Mouming, and Sun Mouyao were prosecuted by the procuratorate for the crime of falsely issuing special VAT invoices, and they will be severely punished by the law.
Jin Baolin said that through this case, it also reminded some companies to operate legally and compliantly, and not to exploit the loopholes in the national export tax rebate policy to do illegal acts.
Otherwise, once discovered by the public security organ or taxation department, the legal price will be paid.
(Yue Bo, Publicity Department of Mianyang Public Security Bureau, also contributed to this article)
"China News Weekly" Issue 20, 2022
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