Slovenian living and working in Stolac charged with tax evasion

(Patria) - The Prosecutor's Office of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton, following an investigation, has filed charges against Igor Ferjan (60), a citizen of the Republic of Slovenia, residing in Stolac, on grounds of reasonable suspicion that he committed the prolonged criminal offense of Tax Evasion under Article 273, Paragraph 3, in conjunction with Paragraph 1 of the Criminal Code of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (CC FBiH), which the Cantonal Court in Mostar has fully confirmed.

Namely, the indictment charges Ferjan with, during the period from May 9, 2011, to April 19, 2018, as a taxpayer, with the aim of avoiding income tax payment, by not providing the required information about his earned taxable income that influences the determination of tax liability, acting contrary to the provisions of Article 14 in conjunction with Article 1 of the Law on Income Tax of FBiH, with the intention of avoiding income tax payment, which stipulates that business income from independent activity includes all income earned from any source received in cash, goods, and services, realized by independently or jointly performing an activity, regardless of whether the natural person is registered or not for performing that activity.

- Thus, he received cash payments into his personal current account for the specified period totaling 4,268,070.29 euros, which at the average exchange rate amounts to 8,347,619.91 KM, and for the income earned, he did not submit an annual income tax return to the competent branch of the Tax Administration. In this way, he avoided paying income tax on the basis of performing independent activity, so the total amount of avoided income tax payment amounts to 834,762.00 KM, thereby acquiring an unlawful property benefit in the stated amount. At the same time, for the indicated period, he damaged the budget and non-budgetary funds in FBiH, as he should have reported and paid income tax at a rate of 10 percent of the tax base, specifically: the public revenue of the budget of the Herzegovina-Neretva Canton for the monetary amount of 509,121.34 KM and the budget of the municipality of Stolac for the monetary amount of 325,640.66 KM - stated the HNK Prosecutor's Office.

Therefore, they added, in the described manner, the accused Ferjan avoided paying the levies prescribed by the tax legislation in the Federation for himself, by not providing the required information or by providing false information about his earned taxable income or about other facts that influence the determination of the amount of such obligations, and the amount of the obligation whose payment he avoided exceeds 200,000 KM.

Furthermore, the HNK Prosecutor's Office, in accordance with the Law, proposed to the Court the confiscation of the unlawfully acquired property benefit from the accused in the total amount of 834,762.00 KM.