Special menu for financial intelligence – cash-out scheme for billions revealed

Source One of the largest shady venues with its own showroom connected restaurants and cafes to the scheme with replacement cash desks and card terminals. Through chains of banks, money was transferred to car dealerships and travel agencies to buy cash. Financial intelligence, the Bank of Russia and the Federal Tax Service have identified one of the largest shadow platforms for tax evasion, hiding and legalizing the income of restaurants and cafes throughout Russia, two sources familiar with the audit materials told RBC and confirmed it in the tax service, the Central Bank and financial intelligence.

Rosfinmonitoring, together with the Federal Tax Service, is conducting an investigation into the operation of a large-scale scheme, allegedly related to the shadow circulation of funds using processing services – settlements between the participants in the scheme are non-transparent, they involve a number of companies providing payment services, several credit institutions, told the press service of the financial intelligence in response to a request from RBC, adding that the scheme may be associated not only with tax evasion, but also with the laundering of criminal proceeds.

“All participants in the scheme have been identified: beneficiaries who evade taxes, and intermediary companies responsible for the technical support of this scheme,” the Federal Tax Service told RBC.

How the “restaurant” scheme works

The legal procedure for crediting money from customers paying in cafes with bank cards involves the transfer of proceeds directly from the bank serving the restaurant to the current account of the restaurant itself. In this case, the restaurant's revenue and tax obligations are declared in full, RBC was told in the press service of the Federal Tax Service.

But when using the identified scheme, the payment went through a terminal that does not belong to the restaurant.

“In order to complicate the tracking of payments and make it difficult to identify customers of the shadow platform, the payment passes through a chain of at least three credit institutions, and two processing companies are artificially included at the input and output of the cash flow, performing the functions of obfuscating payments. At the same time, the cash flow coming from restaurants, in large part, came to companies that have nothing to do with the restaurant business, but generate a stable cash flow. That is, non-cash money from restaurants at some stage changed to non-collected cash,” the tax service explained. />At the launch stage, the scheme needed to be promoted, but with the development of the clientele, the restaurants themselves began to look for an opportunity to join it, a RBC source in the regulatory authorities told RBC, citing evidence from market participants involved in fraud. According to him, the organizers of the scheme opened a “showroom” where those who wished, by prior arrangement, could “get acquainted with the services provided.”

The “showroom” was located in Moscow not far from Prospekt Mira. There, communication took place and papers were signed: for the rental of replacement cash desks, ephemeral information services and shadow acquiring. They also helped install an application, thanks to which it was possible to track and manage hidden proceeds, ”said RBC’s interlocutor.

Then technical specialists came to the restaurant to set up POS-terminals and cash registers. Using this scheme, it was possible to hide the proceeds received when paying with bank cards, and through the application decide what to do next with it: give a gray salary to employees, cash out, transfer to cryptocurrency. In case of termination of the contract, all received equipment was taken away, and the personal account in the application was blocked, the source noted.

The Bank of Russia confirmed to RBC cases of dishonest use of acquiring services of several credit institutions by public catering enterprises.

“In particular, a number of cafes and restaurants used non-cash payment terminals and cash registers issued to third parties to accept payments from their customers. This allowed them not to credit funds to their accounts, but to redirect them to the accounts of travel companies and large car dealerships to buy cash trade proceeds from them, or transfer them to the accounts of individuals, ”the press service of the Central Bank said. “At present, as a result of measures taken jointly by the Bank of Russia and the Federal Tax Service, such operations by credit institutions have practically ceased,” they added.

The Bank of Russia estimated that in the first half of 2022, 21% of all consumption shadow financial services, including cashing out, accounted for the services sector (the Central Bank does not provide a more detailed breakdown), construction is in the lead with 40%.

To prevent the shadow scheme from attracting attention due to discrepancies between cash desk and current account data, restaurants were provided with a replacement cash desk for unaccounted revenue, says a representative of the Federal Tax Service. “Special processing centers confuse the movement of money and replace the number of the terminal and the id of the outlet within a certain range. As a result, even the banks that serve these terminals receive distorted data, and only the owner of the fake terminals knows the exact numbers of the transactions he needs, ”the tax service describes the scheme, adding that this scheme allowed restaurants and cafes to pay gray wages, as well as keep financial indicators at the level necessary to receive tax benefits and the right not to pay VAT.

What benefits does public catering use in 2022

— As a general rule, to small and medium-sized businesses include enterprises with a staff of up to 250 people. But for public catering since the current year, the number limit has been increased to 1,500 people.

— VAT cancellation. Catering enterprises with revenue less than 2 billion rubles. exempt from VAT.

— Reduced rate of insurance fees. For cafes and restaurants, a reduced fee rate of 15% has been introduced instead of the usual 34.9%. The benefit applies to payments in favor of employees in excess of the minimum wage (15,279 rubles).

The main goal of providing preferences for the state was to whitewash the labor market in this segment, said Deputy Finance Minister Alexei Sazanov. “Here we are already seeing a positive result – in the first five months, the payroll of the participants in the experiment increased by 50%, and the number of employees – by 24%. Preliminarily, we can already talk about the effectiveness of this measure,” he said.

>When the state and business agreed on tax incentives, the group of restaurateurs who worked on this made a promise that the market would “fairly and normally work,” notes Arkady Novikov, founder of the Novikov Group. Benefits allowed the business to “breathe a little”, but some restaurateurs “manage to do left-handed schemes: they install additional terminals, hide taxes, which gives them an advantage over those who work fully and honestly,” Novikov told RBC.