“Rulo de la Vaca Vieja”: Customs detected 523 operations for which 22 refrigerators under-invoiced nearly $12 million in meat exports

There Directorate General of Customs-AFIP detected 523 under-invoicing schemes in shipping permits for beef exports during the period 2021-2022. According to the agency, under-invoicing was verified by 22 exporting refrigerators for a total amount of USD 11,908,320.

Most exports were destined for China, Chile and Brazil and the transactions were re-invoiced by merchants without economic substance in Cyprus, Uruguay, Switzerland and the United States.

“The goods were shipped directly from Argentina to Brazil, but in the meantime the operation was re-invoiced by a trader from Cyprus or the United States, who added nothing to the final product, but added a ” commission” of 30% to the operation. . This difference was an irregular profit of the Argentine refrigerators, which left it abroad so as not to liquidate the dollars in the central bankreduce export duties and evade income taxgovernment sources said.

The maneuver was revealed when the Customs began to receive information from foreign customs agencies through information exchange agreements. Most of the data was provided by the Customs Records Information Exchange System (Sidira) for him Mercosur.

This is how the national authorities received information on all meat exports with Chile and Brazil, two important markets for our country. In addition, orders to countries of Europe (part Hilton) and all operations with China within the framework of the bilateral agreement with this country, it is therefore not excluded that new irregularities will be detected.

From customs, they detailed how a usual fraudulent maneuver of Argentinian meat exports to China works. According to the agency, some companies are “playing” with quality grades to avoid checks and declare unrealistic export values.

To understand how the maneuver works, you must first identify the export classes that a refrigerator can declare. On the one hand, there is the export “Type A” or “Young Special” of 430 kilograms. In this case, only 1% is slaughtered for internal consumption. In the “Type B” or “Special Adult» of 430 kg, 8% is slaughtered for internal consumption.

There is also the category “Type C” or “Regular”, which consists of copies usually of two appearances. In this case, 34% is slaughtered and the bone-in beef weighs 200 kilos.

On the other hand, there is “D-type” oh “Good preserves”also called “old cow” and the “E-type” oh “lower reserve“, also known as “Old scrapped”. In the past these had no market and were sold for little money or died in the field, as the freight was more expensive than what was charged for their sale. However, in China there was a “boom” for the old cow which made the business profitable. In this case, 57% is slaughtered and exported in its entirety to China.

However, the routine of some exporters is to pass a normal cow (C) through an old or preserved cow (D and E). From customs they explained that this generates a double advantage, since not only do they skip the controls of Senasabut also allows them to promote under-invoicing, since the price of the “old cow” is significantly lower than that of the “normal cow”.

“Refrigerators pushed ‘old cow’ export records to 12,000 tonnes in an average month, when the normal would be 7,000 tonnes. The customs investigation indicates that in reality these additional 5,000 tonnes are normal “C” cows. In addition to under-invoicing exports and leaving dollars abroad without paying Central bank, refrigerators shorten the local market,” said a customs source familiar with the investigation.

Concretely, the refrigerators on which Customs has put the magnifying glass, and already generated red channel alerts for exporting loops with “old cow”, are To log in (monthly average of 550 tons), Recreation (800 t), Ruyi (700 t), Livestock processor Entre Ríos (650 t) y black bamboo (350 t).

The refrigerator is also in sight Alberdi (430 tons), a company linked to another export group which left a large volume of foreign exchange for the export of agricultural products in abeyance.

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