The scanning goal is to search a case by case to identify the range of the web assembled by the inspector to allegedly receive more bribes from other companies
The São Paulo State Secretariat of Finance and Planning created this Friday (15), a working group to review all processes, protocols and standardization related to the compensation of ICMS withheld by tax substitution, vital nucleus of the corruption scheme attributed to the income tax auditor Artur Gomes da Silva Neto, arrested on Tuesday (12), as the largest target of the icar operation.
Under suspicion of having eaten at least R $ 1 billion in bribes of retail giants, such as Fast Shop -whose leaders, and Mário Otávio Gomes, were also arrested -the State Revenue inspector used as ‘orange’ his own mother, a 73 -year -old elderly woman, a retired public school teacher, to hide money of illicit origin, according to the investigation.
The scanning goal is to search a case by case to identify the fiscal web reach to allegedly receive more bribes from other companies.
The Executive Director of the Tax Administration, André Weiss, climbed via Ordinance Eight Tax Auditors for the Mission. The group will be coordinated by Roberto Lopes de Carvalho.
The other members are Arthur Rafael Gatti Álvares – Substitute Coordinator – Sérgio Antonio Ribeiro Vicente, Ygor Shimabukuro, Fábio Loureiro Dickfeldt, Marcelo Luiz Alves Fernandez, Jose Maurício Bettarello de Lima and Francisco Gabriel Nicolia. The team will have a period of six months – renewable at Weiss’s discretion – to fulfill the ‘priority’ mission.
Operation Icarus is a task force of the Tax Corregedoria of the Secretariat of Finance and the State Prosecutor with its promoters of GEDEC, arm of the institution that investigates economic offenses.
The investigation reveals that Artur Gomes guided the companies regarding requests for reimbursement of ICMS-ST credits, compiling documents to be sent to state revenue accelerating procedures and internal authorizations. In exchange for millionaire bribes, these companies ‘pierced’ the line of requests in the context of complex administrative proceedings that, as a rule, are marked by a slowness that resembles the process of court precatory.
The revision of the processes with Artur’s fingerprints may indicate the participation of his colleagues in the plot. Maping the scope of the scheme is the primary objective of the Prosecutor and the Farm Summit.
The evaluation may reveal further undue credit concessions to other companies and culminate even in annulment of reimbursement procedures and authorizations. As a result, the state tax authorities will draw up against taxpayers involved in the fraud. The results of the working group action must subsidize the farm of the farm.
Arthur was a supervisor of establishment networks, but the archives he analyzed-according to the exchange of emails identified by the prosecutor-were related to requests for reimbursement of tax substitution. The inspector was not the assistance of reimbursement.
Members of the Work Center are confidence names of the State Revenue Directorate and should make a report of the reimbursement concessions at the end of the calculation.
‘Brain’
The breach of the bank and tax secrecy of the company Smart Tax, recorded on behalf of the mother of auditor Artur Gomes da Silva Neto, was the starting point of Operation Icarus. The tax consulting firm is registered on behalf of Kimio Mizukami da Silva, 73, a retired teacher of the public network. In 2021, she declared $ 411,000 in income tax. The equity jumped to R $ 46 million in 2022 and to R $ 2 billion in 2024, due to the income of ‘Consulting’.
The company is registered at the residential address of the supervisor, in Ribeirão Pires, ABC Paulista, and has no registered employees. Kimio has no experience in tax consulting. Since it was constituted in 2021, Smart Tax had a single client: the fast shop.
Investigators are convinced that Smart Tax is just a façade created exclusively to operationalize the transfer of bribes to the Tax Auditor – Arthur is named as the ‘brain’ of the alleged corruption scheme. According to the investigation, he provided a “true criminal tax advice” to companies.
Investigators found hundreds of emails exchanged between Sidney Oliveira, owner of Ultrafarma, and company employees with the auditor. The conversations make clear the clandestine advice in the prosecutor’s assessment.
According to the investigation, Arthur had even the Ultrafarma digital certificate to file compensation requests on behalf of the company with the Secretariat of Finance.
Other companies may have made use of ‘services’ of the auditor “Our challenge from now on is precisely to verify if there are other auditors involved in the practice of corruption and also if there are other companies involved in this stratagem,” said Prosecutor Roberto Bodini, which is part of the Special Action Group on Repression of Economic Crimes (GEDEC).
*With information from Estadão Content
Posted by Nátaly Tenório
