Galp Energia, in addition to refusing to pay the statutory fuel company supplement tax and now owing the Treasury around €250 million, has been caught on the fiddle again.A fiscal ruse, referred to in-house as a ‘flexi-scheme,’ has seen Galp employees putting the company’s Fiscal Identification Number on many of their personal purchases. The company later claims these sums as business expenses to reduce its tax payments.
Employees engaging in this scheme are rewarded accordingly, but not as much as the company is by inflating its expenditure, lowering it taxable surplus and reducing its social security contributions.
The flexi-scheme encourages staff spending money on trips to the gym, computer supplies and other ‘services’ to make sure that the receipts are issued in the name of the company.
The Left Bloc, naturally, has hit the roof, with its leading MPs claiming the whole thing is a massive tax evasion scam and wondered if the government knew what Galp was up to and, if so, perhaps it could explain how the fuel giant's behaviour accords with the legal, decent and honest behaviour expected from one of the premier companies operating in the country.
Galp, of course, is part of the consortium that is expecting to be allowed to drill a test well for oil and gas off Aljezur later this year.
The company's behaviour would indicate its directors are adept at tax avoidance and, probably, tax evasion so are hardly likely to declare a profit from any future oil or gas extraction operation as the concession contract stipulated that, "royalties are only payable after all expenses are recovered."
Galp’s response is that this ‘payment alternative,’ is "transparent and available in several of the international geographies where Galp is present and depends exclusively on a voluntary and individual decision by employees that gives them access to advantageous conditions for professional training, health plans, pension funds and day care centres, among others."
This plan was presented to workers as a "way to obtain benefits in areas such as mobility (transportation passes, parking,) health (collaborative health fund, household health fund, unconventional therapies health fund, gymnasiums,) retirement (pension fund), education and technology (acquisition of equipment such as PCs, tablets and smartphones).
"This scheme is a scam," says Jorge Costa, Mariana Mortágua, Heitor de Sousa, José Soeiro and Isabel Pires of the Left Bloc.
