Greek police bust fuel smuggling ring

Greek police today said they had cracked a fuel smuggling ring that had cost the cash-strapped state more than USD 4.8 million in lost taxes in the last two years.
The operation ran inside an Athens-based fuel distribution company, whose tanker truck drivers siphoned off petrol during delivery to ships and resold it through a network of affiliated petrol stations.
The smugglers had paid off a customs official in Piraeus and a senior civil servant at the environment ministry to tip them off ahead of inspections by authorities.
According to the police, the racket was headed by the chairman and managing director of the fuel company.

Fifteen people have been arrested and another nine are sought in connection to the case, the police said.
The smugglers had illegally siphoned off about 4.5 million litres of maritime fuel from legitimate company orders over the past two years, the police said.

A justice ministry official earlier this month calculated that fuel smuggling had cost the Greek state about 30 billion euros over the past two decades.
Greek authorities have been probing numerous fiscal scandals dating from the past decade after the country nearly went bankrupt in 2010.
Another scam was uncovered in Thessaloniki today in which a group of volunteer firefighters had misused more than USD 3.4 million in donations from local authorities and companies in the last 12 years.

Last week, the police said a foreign ministry-backed landmine charity had misappropriated about nine million euros in taxpayers' money earmarked for demining projects in Bosnia, Lebanon and Iraq a decade ago.