Dr. Marius-Cristian Frunza on VAT fraud

<p>Marius is a founder of Schwarzthal Tech, a Fintech start-up providing disruptive KYC solutions empowered by Artificial Intelligence for tackling financial crime by making it generally affordable. He has published 4 books, the book that interests the tax world the most is called VAT Fraud<a href="#_ftn1">[1]</a>. Marius also starred in 4 TV documentaries about financial crime, and a movie <i>Lords of Scam</i><a href="#_ftn2"><i><strong>[2]</strong></i></a> about VAT fraud with CO2 emissions, on <i>Netflix.</i> He is an associate professor of finance with Dauphine University (FRA), and has a PhD in mathematics from Paris Sorbonne University.</p><p><strong>Co2 fraud – VAT fraud – tax fraud</strong></p><p>Marius started his studies in tax with VAT fraud cases while trading with CO2 emissions, then expanding his work to VAT fraud in general and now – tax fraud and financial crime in general. People are creating nowadays sophisticated networks with a purpose of hiding money, so his firm is helping anyone to detect the networks, primary clients being banks and lawyers. Their approach is KYN (know your network), not KYC. Despite all the AI capabilities by some of the brightest minds in the profession it sounded like it will be impossible for a long time to detect the criminal networks of those who proactively hide their funds, like the war criminal Putin. </p><p><strong>Solutions </strong></p><p>We also discussed several measures how to make the world a better place. One of them was related to inter-connection of data bases of the tax authorities and between the public registers within the EU, to start with. Regarding evaluation if a UBO registered as such or is just a nominee the controlling authorities should evaluate if the person had capabilities to earn all the wealth registered on his/her name. There was a Cyprus law firm officially controlling most the Russian elite properties in London. So, compliance officers especially in banks should better look at transactions within the company in order to determine who t