900,000 Euro-Tax fraud with slot machines- man in court

In the Austrian Salzburg, a restaurateur was accused of evading around 900,000 in taxes. More precisely this concerns the winnings, which he cashed in from his slot machines in four different premises. The 45-year-old Turkish citizen is in court.

The sharp business man from Salzburg did not pay regular tax on the winnings obtained from the slot machine in the space of five years. The prosecution in Austria is accusing the man of evading Income Tax and Value Added Tax amounting to 865,000 Euro. The defence council of the man concedes mistakes in the accounts, but does not understand why he should be accused of tax evasion because of this.

The accused is facing up to ten years in prison

The 45-year-old male from Salzburg was up till some time ago the operator of a total of four catering outlets. In his premises the man set up several slot machine, from which he had quite a good income. In any case, the prosecution is accusing him, that he had not declared his winnings lawfully and thus evading nearly 900,000 Euro in tax and bypassing the Austrian Finance Authorities.

In conjunction with the investigations, the prosecution seized the relevant slot machines to analyse them. The result: The amusement machines were definitely not manipulated, but the accused had simply not been honest when declaring his earnings to the Finance Authorities.

The accused had given the false information in his Yearly Marketing Statements and therefore evaded taxes amounting to 865,000 Euro. The Austrian Finance Police came after him when they found out that he had much higher turnover from purposely-built amusement machines, than he had originally declared to the Tax Office. Therefore investigative proceedings were started against him and to date, they are still going on.

Defence counsel requests acquittal

The defence counsel admitted to the newspaper “Salzburger Nachrichten” that the accounting procedure is actually not faultless. The attorney cannot comprehend, that his client is being accused of tax evasion because of the mistake. 

Instead, the defence is now starting a counterattack and is accusing the Tax Office of contradictory arguments. Besides this, the determined sales estimates were too high. The court requires more information and therefore the hearing has been postponed. The reason being that additional documentation is required to be able to judge to what extent the accused can be accused of tax evasion. For the defence counsel, the judgement is however certain:

“The accused is however not guilty, he should be acquitted.”

The prosecution sees the incidents somewhat differently. It points out, that inspection of the amusement machines which were seized by the Financial Police showed that there is “a significant discrepancy to the declared earnings”. Added to this, the monthly tally of the daily cash receipts had 

been partly copied and subsequently changed. At first the authorities had issued him with an administrative fine of 200,000 Euro. However, as expected, the former restaurateur did not agree.

Illegal machines are a problem in Austria 

Lately, in several regions in Austria there were often problems with illegally set up or technically manipulated amusement machines. In September of last year, the Tax Authorities together with the police searched, in this context, around 30 localities. In Austria, gambling is something which is decided on by the regions, therefore in some regions as Kärnten or Upper Austria one can play on amusement machines even outside casinos. Meanwhile this is considered illegal in other regions as Vienna or Salzburg.

Conclusion

Should the 45-year old former-restaurateur actually be found guilty of tax evasion, then he can face, due to the high amount of taxes evaded, a prison sentence of up to ten years. Further to this, he could be also sentenced to pay a fine amounting to his tax debts many times over. However due to the fact, that the man is now unemployed, this would be difficult. We question, whether the evidence will be enough to declare the man guilty. The accused believes that he is in the right and asserts his innocence in front of the presiding judge: “I do not believe that I have committed a criminal act”.

Image Source: https://pixabay.com/de/photos/salzburg-österreich-mönchsberg-933819/