A Greek pizza chain that enjoyed a remarkable nationwide expansion in Greece as a franchise in recent years is accused of operating a criminal ring that evaded millions of euro worth of tax through manipulating sales receipts.
The prosecution involves the founder and 22 staff members of Pizza Fan, all of whom are detained under charges for grave felonies.
According to the case, the pizza chain appears to have evaded payment to the state of VAT, from 2022 on, amounting to at least € 25 million. Administration officials, accountants and programmers, are among the 23 defendants.
Pizza Fan employs more than 2,500 staff across its outlets, paying out over € 36 million in wages and over € 9 million in insurance coverage annually, the company said in an announcement, attributing the case to a “misunderstanding” of promotional actions.
Sources claim that the investigation was triggered by an employee’s complaint to authorities that they had received less work hours declared by the employer to national insurance than they had actually worked.
Greek pizza chain bosses accused of money laundering
Hellenic Police has accused the 23 defendants of operating a criminal ring which caused the state losses of over € 35 million through avoiding issuing receipts for orders placed at Pizza Fan outlets from 2016 to 2026. The estimated amount of hidden sales revenues was estimated at € 150 million.
The charges have included the creation and direction of a criminal organisation; participation in a criminal organisation; tax evasion exceeding € 150,000 through not submitting VAT and by submitting inaccurate tax forms; direct collusion in the specific acts; and aggravated money laundering from criminal activities.
The scheme was allegedly based on special orders, selected through an algorithm, which allowed a store to process the order as a “gift”, avoiding the issuing of a receipt. This order-placement software was developed by computer programmers on staff; it ran out of the Athens suburb of Halandri and allowed members of the crime ring to learn the real revenues of stores and calculate the amounts not declared to tax authorities.
The 23 defendants were arrested after sweeps in homes, stores, and offices in Attica and Thessaloniki regions, while another 109 identified individuals – managers of the franchise stores throughout Greece – are included in the case file, Athens News Agency – Macedonian Press Agency (ANA-MPA) reports.
Police forces confiscated € 1.2 million cash found stashed by the founder and owner, 68, in his villa; 52 computers, 6 luxury cars and 3 motorcycles, 92 luxury watches and jewellery and several notes, cellphones, USB sticks, and electronic devices. In addition, authorities have frozen the assets of all people involved, while a total of 108 tax reports for the years 2023-2026 were completed and forwarded to the tax service for tax evasion calculations.
Pizza Fan responds to criminal accusations
Following the shocking developments that made headlines on all Greek media, the company attributed the case to a misunderstanding.
“Our company always carried out a lot of promotional actions for free products to consumers. Because of this, it is possible that confusion has arisen in calculating the company’s and outlets’s revenues,” Pizza Fan said in a statement.
The company added that it was cooperating with justice, tax services and all authorities, while its priority was the franchise and the 2,500-plus staff working at the outlets. “Our goal is to coordinate with them and relevant agencies so that employees are protected,” Pizza Fan said. “Additionally, our aim is the immediate and full restart of our network in order to reduce the impact on franchisees, who comprise the spine of our activities for years now.”.
The Greek pizza chain promised to provide updates on the situation and apologised to its thousands of customers, and business partners, for the sudden interruption of services, concluding that they would do their best “so the issue is resolved as quickly as possible.”
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