IV TAXES
I must observe that at the beginning of the investigation nothing was mentioned about tax evasion. I was arrested because of abusing the business position but it was obviously not enough. It seems that some consultants said that the indictment should be made stronger, primarily in order to make it comprehensible to the foreign public which does not understand the meaning of the position abuse. Secondly, all the Prosecution witnesses testified in our favour. And then tax evasion was introduced because it is obvious that the charges are flimsy when it comes to the position abuse.
I must say that the greatest absurd of the Indictment is the fact that we are charged with tax evasion.
Let me remind you of the fact that in the past ten years my company has paid 1,8 billion EUR for taxes. I am the largest tax payer in the region.
Last year, after selling Maxi, we willingly paid the taxes of 25 million euros to Serbia although we were not legally obliged to do so. This is confirmed by the statement of the former Prime Minister of the Serbian Government.
I must admit one thing: although I am the president of the company, I am not familiar with tax policies. We have engaged KPMG, the best-known world company for tax issues, and that company is in charge of following both Delta’s and my own tax liabilities. This company claims in its report that there is no tax violation here. It is not proved only by this company but also by the experts from the Faculty of Law as well as the experts who were in charge of making and applying the Law. We offered four qualified opinions but the Prosecution declined all of them.
The tax I am charged with has never been calculated or collected from anyone in Serbia – simply because it does not exist.
The Prosecution accuses us of hiding the facts concerning this transaction in order to avoid paying taxes although the whole transaction was reported to all the relevant state authorities, including the tax authorities.
Once again it is not clear whether we avoided paying taxes or we reported it and how someone can be responsible for tax evasion if he did not file any taxes. I am asking the Prosecution to decide whether we filed the taxes or not.
Several years ago the tax inspectors established that there were no taxes here and now the same inspector has established that we were obliged to pay taxes. Is that the legal security we are all speaking about?
