3.2 Million Euro To Usd

[Jeana Rodia]

TheItalian data protection supervisory authority (Garante per la protezione dei dati personali) ordered Vodafone to pay a fine in excess of Euro 12,250,000 on account of having unlawfully processed the personal data of millions of users for telemarketing purposes. As well as having to pay the fine, the company is required to implement several measures set out by the Garante in order to comply with national and EU data protection legislation.

Further, the Garante ordered Vodafone to implement systems to demonstrate that processing for telemarketing purposes complies with consent requirements. Vodafone will be required additionally to provide proof that contractual arrangements are activated only following telemarketing calls placed by their own sales network through numbers that are registered with the ROC. Stronger security measures will have to be implemented by the company to prevent unauthorised accesses to the customer database, and the company was also ordered to reply in full to certain data subject rights requests.

Joint Customs Operation Bellerophon uncovered more than 18 million euro of VAT fraud involving goods imported into the EU. The Operation was led by the Italian Customs (ADM) with the support of the European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF) and the participation of eight more Member States.

Joint Customs Operation (JCO) Bellerophon focused on the potential evasion of import duties and VAT relating to goods, mainly textiles, footwear and toys, imported into the EU under so-called customs procedure 42. Customs procedure 42 applies when goods enter the EU through one Member State but have another Member State as their final destination. The procedure allows importers to obtain a VAT exemption in the EU country of entry. VAT is then due in the EU country of actual destination.

OLAF and its partners found attempts to abuse the facilitations of customs procedure 42 via so-called missing trader schemes (see below for background). The majority of instances detected by the operation were on the China-Greece-Italy maritime route, with the port of Piraeus as principal import entry point and Italy as the main final market.

Control activities were coordinated with the customs authorities of eight other EU Member States. The operational phase, with direct controls of goods at the border, took place between 5 and 23 June 2023 and identified several missing traders and undervalued imports. These activities were subsequently followed by a post-operational phase that ended in January this year, consisting in audits on the final consignees of the goods in Italy.

A final debriefing meeting on the results was held last week at the headquarters of the ADM in Rome. The participating countries and OLAF discussed the intelligence gathered during the operation and future cooperation to counter this type of fraud.

As a further result of the controls carried out during JCO Bellerophon, two big shipments of counterfeited goods were also seized. They contained 127,000 counterfeit hats and clothing items, as well as 4 million cigarette packs.

Kirill GELMI

Spokesperson

European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF)

Phone: +32(0)2 29-88146

Email: olaf-mediaec [dot] europa [dot] eu (olaf-media[at]ec[dot]europa[dot]eu)

-fraud.ec.europa.eu

Twitter: @EUAntiFraud

LinkedIn: European Anti-Fraud Office (OLAF)

Article 1.1 of the OECD Model Rules provides that the Pillar Two GloBE Rules apply to Constituent Entities in an MNE Group that have annual revenue of 750 million euros or more in the Consolidated Financial Statements of the UPE in at least two of the four Fiscal Years preceding the relevant Fiscal Year.

The 750 million threshold is based on euros. When implementing domestic legislation to give effect to the Pillar Two GloBE rules, it is recommended that countries use euros to determine the threshold.

However, this will undoubtedly not always be the case. If a country uses its domestic currency to determine the revenue threshold it is also recommended that it rebases its currency each year (as provided in Paragraph 18 of the Introduction to the Commentary to the OECD Model Rules).

For instance, if an MNE group has a fiscal year that ends on 31 March 2023, and the revenue threshold of the country is rebased on 31 December each year, the revenue threshold that applies as at 1 April 2022 is used.

When preparing consolidated financial statements, assets, liabilities, income and expenses of the parent entity and other entities are combined. And all intragroup assets and liabilities are eliminated.

Revenue is to be determined in line with the relevant accounting standard, which may allow for netting for discounts, returns and allowances, but before deducting cost of sales and other operating expenses. If different types of revenue are separately presented in the consolidated P&L account (eg extraordinary income), they must be aggregated to determine the total revenue.

Net gains from investments (whether realised or unrealised) reflected in the consolidated P&L account and income or gains separately presented as extraordinary or non-recurring items are specifically included in the definition of revenue.

If a financial accounting standard requires gains and losses to be presented separately in the consolidated P&L account, the MNE Group is required to reduce revenues by the amount of the gross losses netted off against gross gains.

A flexible approach is taken to financial entities, which may not record gross amounts from transactions in their financial statements. In such cases items considered similar to revenue under the UPEs financial accounting standards should be used.

The December 2023 OECD Administrative Guidance provides information on how MNEs should determine the Adjusted Covered Taxes for a Fiscal Year if the taxable period of Constituent Entities in the jurisdiction is not the same as the Fiscal Year of the MNE Group?

The OECD Administrative Guidance confirms that the method used in the Consolidated Financial Statements (or other financial statements used to determine the Financial Accounting Net Income or Loss of the Constituent Entity) should be used to determine its Adjusted Covered Taxes for the Fiscal Year.

"Reliable, sourced and trustworthy information is priceless but it has a cost. The Competition Authority reminded Google of this today," said Marina Ferrari, the French government's secretary of state for digital affairs.

Google had made commitments in 2022 to negotiate fairly with French news organizations, a year after the Competition Authority hit the U.S. tech giant with a 500 million euro fine over the long-running dispute.

The watchdog said Google had agreed to "not dispute the facts" as part of the settlement process and proposed "a series of corrective measures" in response to the failings identified by the authority.

"We've settled because it's time to move on," the company said, noting that it had signed "a significant number of licensing agreements" with 280 French news publishers under the European Copyright Directive.

Former AFP head Pierre Louette, now chief executive at newspaper group Le Parisien-Les Echos, said: "It would be better to have even higher fair remuneration for publishers rather than continuing to pay fines to the state."

The tech company also said "more clarity" was needed regarding which media it must pay as they can include everything from general news outlets to specialist nautical publications or listings and comparison sites.

Brussels, 13 February 2019 - Belgium and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) have signed a new funding agreement worth two million euros to combat corruption and wildlife crime in Africa. The funds will boost UNODC's efforts in this area and allow for increased support to African Member States.

Criminals are known to net vast sums of money from wildlife and forest crime. These large amounts of criminally acquired funds are in turn used to support corruption, which consequently erodes the integrity of the government and facilitates distortions of economic activities that are not sustainable.

To prevent and fight wildlife and forest crime, sophisticated criminal networks need to be dismantled. Every link in the criminal chain has to be tackled, from the sourcing, transport and delivery of illegally harvested wildlife and forest products to the laundering of proceeds from these crimes.

John Brandolino, UNODC Director of the Division for Treaty Affairs, highlighted that "the crimes of wildlife trafficking and corruption are bad enough but together they are devastating, adversely effecting societies and development on a number of fronts".

Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Affairs and Minister of Defense Didier Reynders said that "Belgium is very proud to contribute two million euros to support UNODC's Programme in the Central African region, with a focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Virunga Park), Uganda, Chad and Cameroon."

Mr. Reynders emphasized that "this pledge is fully in line with our strong commitment to combatting illegal wildlife trafficking, which requires a global approach and international cooperation between source countries and importing countries." He also highlighted that "wildlife is an irreplaceable part of our planet's living natural resources. It must be protected for this generation and for those of tomorrow."

Combatting wildlife and forest crimes and the corruption which facilitates them, the Deputy Prime Minister said, "also benefits the development of local communities. By cutting an important source of funding for criminal networks and armed groups, it is also crucial for regional governance and security."

Within UNODC, the Global Programmes for Combating Wildlife and Forest Crime; and on Corruption have built a strong joint programme to address all the links in the criminal justice chain- from crime scene to courtroom- with a special emphasis on combating corruption and dismantling criminal networks.

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