The Civil Guard investigates a large network of tax fraud in the sale of fuel in Spain

Tax fraud in the sale of hydrocarbons has skyrocketed in Spain in recent months. In part, because fraudsters are taking advantage to squeeze their operations before a new control mechanism that the Government approved at the end of 2023 comes into force on March 28, which involves limiting the intermediaries who can participate in the fuel marketing. During this kind of moratorium, the markets have detected a significant increase in fuel offers, mainly diesel, at abnormally low prices.. The rebound has been so striking that it has already caught the attention of the Civil Guard.

For some time now, the Armed Institute has been following the trail of the convoluted corporate architecture that would be serving as a parapet for a large plot of tax fraud in the country.. The intricate nature of these networks of instrumental companies and front men complicates the investigations of an investigation that could last more than a year.. For now, sources from the Civil Guard and the Tax Agency agree in conversation with EL MUNDO that one of the companies on the radar of the ongoing investigation is Biomar Oil.

It is a company under the umbrella of the TCM Investors holding company dedicated to the purchase and sale of wholesale fuel at an international level.. “In very few years we have managed to position ourselves in the markets, rigorously complying with all the requirements established in the national and international standards in the sector,” says the holding company's website about Biomar, which places the company as one of the top ten. Spanish market operators.

One of the reasons why Biomar Oil is in the crosshairs of the financial authorities is its meteoric increase in income. Between 2021 and 2022, its turnover went from 25 million euros to more than 1,000 million, as El Confidencial reported.. Sources from the trading field point out that, given the volume of refined fuel that the company has acquired in the last year in the markets, everything indicates that it would have doubled its sales again in 2023.. This would mean an increase in its turnover of almost 8,000% in just two years.

Biomar, which according to the commercial registry has a total of 16 employees (data from 2022), justified in its latest report the improvement in its figures in a change of ownership of the company, which made it go from being “a company that sells at a local level, supplying mainly the Group's Service Station network, to become one of the operators with the highest sales volume in the country”. This medium has tried to contact Biomar, without success.

The corporate structure of the group is not simple. TCM Investors defines itself as the head of the holding company that includes Biomar Oil SL. and three other companies in the hydrocarbon field, but there is no corporate relationship between all of them, nor information about their shareholders.. Yes they have the same administrators. TCM and Biomar also shared their headquarters in the Cuzco building, at 141 Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid, but a month ago the latter moved its registered office to Barcelona.

In 2023, Biomar's parent company bought two companies that manage the fuel storage terminals at the ports of Malaga and Cartagena.. Both, like their previous owner, Buran Energy, were on the Treasury's list of defaulters, with a debt of 17 million euros.. Buran requested its dissolution after transferring its subsidiaries.

According to official Treasury data, the tax fraud hole in the sale of hydrocarbons was 700 million euros in 2022. To this we must add the evasion of compensation that operators who do not include in their product the volume of biofuel set in Europe, which represents a loss of another 95 million to public coffers, has to pay.

Sources close to the Tax Agency (AEAT) assure that fraud has reached “disproportionate dimensions” in a few years and explain that these cases are “closely linked to organized VAT fraud schemes, from the so-called trout (fictitious) companies”, to missing traders and shell companies”.

Fraudulent operators generally pretend to sell hydrocarbons to companies created ad hoc, without VAT charges.. They then resell the product to final distributors (gas stations) at a very low price, even at a loss, something they can afford because they have not borne the VAT on the purchase, nor do they pay the VAT that affects the sale, because they disappear from the map without carrying out the settlement. According to the figures used in the sector, about 1,000 gas stations, of the 12,000 in Spain, would be selling below the cost price..

“We are being very harsh for two reasons. Fraud in numbers represents 6% of all tax revenue from hydrocarbons. In addition, these frauds represent a violation of the free competition that prevails in the EU internal market, as they are harmonized taxes at the community level, trying to expel small operators from the market, which results in harm to the free setting of prices,” explains another source from the Tax Administration.