On November 5, 2017, another data leak was published with Paradise Papers, from which indications of tax crimes in particular can also be obtained. The Hessian Tax Administration is responsible for evaluating these and other leaks at the Kassel Tax Office for the prosecution of authorities at home and abroad.
“In the past five years, our experts from Kassel have answered more than 1,500 inquiries from Germany and abroad about Paradise Papers. Data on nearly 600 people and about 1,000 companies have been handed over to the responsible tax authorities for further tax law and criminal tax law examination. More have been provided. From 76,000 Paradise Papers documents to investigators around the world “So far, we have received feedback from submitted transactions about an additional tax result of close to three million euros,” Hesse State Finance Minister Michael Budenberg said in Wiesbaden today on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the publication of the Paradise Papers.
At the Kassel tax office, more data records have been checked and are now being checked. Well-known examples include the Panama Papers, the Naval leaks, the Bahamas leaks, the Malta leaks, and the Cyprus/Guernsey leaks.
“Of all the leaks, we have now handed over 24 million documents from Kassel to the investigating authorities for further processing. As a result, at least 75 million euros can be recovered for the community in tax and criminal tax proceedings. This is a huge victory for tax justice. Since the responsible authorities are not obliged to inform us of additional results, which have their starting point in the work of our data experts in Kassel, the actual successes are certainly much higher,” said Budenberg. Not all authorities report their findings to Kassel. There are hardly any comments, especially from abroad, which is why it can be assumed that there are a large number of unreported results, especially from our European neighbors.
Active around the world with artificial intelligence
The tax criminals must now think of Kassel with horror. An increasingly dense network extends from Kassel, where tax criminals are caught in Germany and around the world. The Tax Office in Kassel has become a competent contact for many investigative authorities, both national and international. Finance Minister Budenberg said that the focus and specialization we have made in Kassel for processing and evaluating collective data is logical, effective and sends a strong signal in the fight against tax crime.”
The Hessian Tax Administration’s Artificial Intelligence Research Center is located in the Kassel tax office. Your job has a big share in evaluating leaks. The leaks, with tens of millions of documents, could be made usable for investigators, particularly through software developed by the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research. Without AI, we would have had to be looking for a needle in a haystack, Budenberg explained, but we are much stronger in our efforts to achieve more tax fairness.” “Research in the automated classification of documents will make working with mass data easier in many areas in the future. We have already been able to use the experience and knowledge we gained from assessing the leaks to review coronavirus aid and currently to enforce EU financial sanctions against Russia.”
“The Hesse Tax Administration meets the growing demands in the handling of collective data, in particular through its own training and the use of IT professionals who support the work of our colleagues with expertise in tax law and criminal tax law, for example in IT forensics and in a think tank Artificial intelligence, meaningful and fair support.”This personnel deployment is surrounded by appropriate modern IT equipment,” said Hesse Minister of Finance Michael Budenberg.