By filing an initiative to terminate the contract on the transfer of ownership of the Bemax company, the owners of the company admitted that the contract was fraudulent and designed to avoid taxes. By falsifying the stated sales price, they wanted to pay only 28,4 euros instead of 30 million euros, and they did not even pay those 30 euros. According to the Law on Obligations, they have no grounds for terminating the contract. This time, they will have to pay 28,4 million euros to the state, the Deputy Prime Minister told "Vijesti" Momo Koprivica.
Former owner of Bemax Veselin Kovačević, after receiving a tax ruling to pay capital gains tax of 28,4 million euros on the sale of shares in that company, filed a lawsuit with the Basic Court in Podgorica for termination of the purchase and sale contract and is now appealing the tax ruling, requesting that the administrative procedure regarding the tax ruling be suspended until the court decides on the termination of the contract.
Kovačević sold Bemax in July 2022 Ivan Ubović for 750 thousand euros. The basis for determining the tax liability was precisely that contract. The expert determined that he sold the company worth 158,2 million euros for 750 thousand euros, but also that the capital gains tax must be calculated on the actual value, not the value stated in the contract. Thus, Kovačević was calculated to have a tax liability of 23,7 million and interest to date of 4,7 million.
In December 2022, at the proposal of the Government, the law was amended, adding a section stating that the real value of sold shares in companies can be determined by the Tax Administration, and that it is obliged to check all such contracts from 2018. Kovačević believes that this is a retroactive application of the law.
"In order to eliminate the cheap misconceptions that these affected persons are spreading, a few remarks are important for the sake of the truth in the eyes of the public. First, it is absolutely not true that a new tax was introduced retroactively, nor was the rate of the existing tax increased retroactively. The story about the retroactive introduction of the tax is the most ordinary manipulation. Second, the amendments to the law only gave the competent tax authority the authority to check whether contracts concluded in the last five years have stated a fake, i.e. artificially and purposefully reduced sales price, in order to avoid paying taxes. The mechanism of abuse consists in defining an unrealistically low sales price in the contract, in order to have the smallest possible difference between the sales and purchase prices and therefore a smaller capital gains tax base. Therefore, in these amendments to the law, the same tax, the same tax form and the same tax rate remained. None of that was touched. Therefore, the only possibility introduced was for the tax authority to comb through contracts from the previous period in order to uncover fraudulent arrangements that "They would be subject to the already applicable tax, so that the state would not be cheated and deprived of the funds that belong to it," said Koprivica, who in June last year launched an initiative for the Tax Office to check this purchase contract.
The Deputy Prime Minister explains that when the tax authority checks and reviews the purchase and sale contracts, the previously introduced and unchanged tax is paid, at the previously introduced and unchanged rate - capital gains tax at a rate of 15%.
"In order to conceal their iniquity, in a sea of other, even more serious, they are using cheap tricks, spreading fog, but they are also obviously engaging in legal acrobatics, in order to steal as much as possible from the state. They have shown that both when they conclude and when they want to terminate the contract, they have the same goal - to cheat and deceive the state. However, these games are no longer valid. According to the Law on Obligations, they have no basis for terminating the given contract. This time, they will have to pay the state 28,4 million euros. State bodies are there to preserve their integrity and the basic principles of the legal system.
Kovačević sold Bemax in July 2022 Ivan Ubović for 750 thousand euros. The basis for determining the tax liability was precisely that contract. The expert determined that he sold the company worth 158,2 million euros for 750 thousand euros, but also that the capital gains tax must be calculated on the actual value, not the value stated in the contract.
Ivan Ubović is the son of a businessman Ranko Ubović, whom Kovačević said on the show "Načisto" in November 2021 that he had been an informal co-owner of "Bemax" from the beginning, although his name was never mentioned in the company's documentation.
In his appeal against the decision, Kovačević also states that a procedure was filed with the Constitutional Court to determine the constitutionality of two articles of the law on which the tax decision is based, and that the determination of the tax liability should therefore have been suspended.
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