Fake invoices worth 16 million zloty and 284 foreign workers. Suspect brought from Spain to Gdańsk

The arrest forms part of an investigation by the Regional Prosecutor's Office in Gdańsk, whose economic strand Maritime Border Guard officers have been running since 2020. It concerns so-called VAT crimes totalling more than 16 million zloty and the use of forged documents in the illegal employment of 284 foreign nationals in Poland.

Close to a thousand invoices at a Gdynia company

The suspect faces 77 charges. In 2018 and 2019, as a board member of a Gdynia company, he is alleged to have used close to a thousand false VAT invoices with a combined value of more than 16 million zloty, documenting fictitious purchases of goods and services. Once entered in the company's books, they reduced VAT due by more than 3 million zloty.

A second strand concerns 49 false invoices worth close to 3 million zloty for transactions that never took place. According to prosecutors, issuing them helped another company reduce its VAT by a further 792,000 zloty.

Forged medical certificates, safety training and social insurance filings

Prosecutors also accuse Ivan P. of directing offences committed by others and of facilitating the illegal stay of 284 foreign nationals in Poland between 2017 and 2020.

Fifty-five of the charges concern the use of forged documents for that purpose: falsified occupational health certificates, certificates of fictitious completion of health and safety training, ZUS ZUA forms purporting to register workers for social insurance and confirm payment of contributions, and declarations from a district labour office on the assignment of work to foreign nationals. The suspect is also alleged to have held a forged stamp of a hospital, made to resemble the original.

Up to 25 years in prison

The most serious charge, concerning a VAT crime, carries a sentence of five to 25 years' imprisonment and a substantial fine. The investigation is ongoing: prosecutors are analysing the evidence gathered and examining the liability of other people who cooperated with the suspect.

Fictitious invoices and fictitious workers in a single investigation

The tax strand and the residence strand of this case do not sit side by side by accident. A company that employs foreign nationals without the required medical checks, training and insurance registration cuts its labour costs, while a circulation of fictitious invoices cuts its tax bill. The two mechanisms complement each other and usually lead to the same people.

That is why the whole investigation is run by the investigative arm of the Maritime Border Guard, a service that alongside border and port control conducts multi-year economic cases in which the forgery of foreign workers' documents is tied to tax fraud running into millions of zloty.