It was further argued that, since defendant 6 was not connected to the preparation of the supplier accounts of PLANAS, an offense should not be attributed to him for delivering forged documents to customs brokers, and he was not aware that this was the use of false import receipts. With regard to the claim that defendant 6 had registered checks that were not presented for repayment at the order of the Sevilla company, it was argued that this defendant was not the controlling shareholder of the Sevilla company, and therefore he does not know whether these checks were indeed not paid.
Since the defendant did not know that these were false registrations and shell companies, no offense should be attributed to him regarding false VAT reports, and in any event, the duty to report applies to Piccolo-Line and not to him, despite the fact that he is an officer of that company. Even if the defendant noticed the reduced prices appearing in the PLANAS accounts, it is not possible to point to the existence of a criminal intent necessary to commit this offense.
After examining the evidence relating to defendant 6, I came to a clear conclusion that this defendant was involved in the entire fraudulent process vis-à-vis the tax authorities. This is an experienced importer, who has had close relations for years with Opsa, whose products were marketed by Piccolo-Line, which he owns. I have no reasonable basis to assume that this defendant acted to release the goods without considering the fact that it was a supplier certificate of PLANAS, when he knew that the real supplier was Opsa, and there is no basis for the claim that he did not refer to the amounts appearing in the false supplier certificates, as a basis for the payment of reduced import taxes. After all, the import taxes were paid by him, and when he knew very well that these were false documents, which led to the payment of import taxes much lower than the required taxes, how could this defendant claim that he was not aware of anything, and that the matter was not of interest to him at all?