Lawsuits | Accusations: The owner of Sunny Car Center transferred millions abroad and paid himself an exorbitant salary

The financial crime trial related to Sunny Car Center started in the courts.

Prosecutors demanded a garage project for Sunny Car Center’s handyman Markku Ritaluoma for economic crimes, a prison sentence of at least five and a half years.

The trial of the case began on Friday with a preparatory session at the Kanta-Häme district court in Hämeenlinna. Ritaluoma is not present at the preparation session herself, but is represented by a lawyer Riitta Leppiniemi.

Sunny Car Center with hundreds of jobs was supposed to be built along Kolmostie, north of Hämeenlinna. However, it was not realized, and the project ended in bankruptcy in 2015.

Markku Ritaluoma served as chairman of Sunny Car Center’s board and CEO. According to prosecutors, he was guilty of several serious financial crimes, most of which are related to Sunny Car Center.

The charges include gross dishonesty of the debtor, gross accounting crime, gross tax fraud and gross fraud.

Cases related to Sunny Car Center have been dealt with in the courts many times before, but now criminal liability is being investigated in the courtroom for the first time. In the past, claims for damages have been dealt with in court, among other things.

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On Friday According to the subpoena application that was published, Ritaluoma, among other things, arranged without an acceptable reason for several million euros the assets of the Sunny Car Center company abroad, out of the reach of creditors.

According to the prosecutors, Ritaluoma handed over 6.2 million euros of the company’s funds to foreign parties in account transfers and in cash. Sunny Car Center did not receive any consideration or benefit from them.

The surrendered funds were recorded in the accounting and closing documents as investment-related security payments and other financial costs, even though the investments did not actually exist.

According to the prosecutors, Ritaluoma continued to make money transfers, even though the company did not receive any compensation for the previous transfers and the funds were permanently lost.

In addition, according to the indictment, Ritaluoma handed over 200,000 euros of the company’s funds to herself as an excessive salary. The prosecutors arrived at this amount by determining the share exceeding the gross monthly salary of around 16,000 euros as too large.

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Ritaluoma is also suspected of handing over 150,000 euros of the company’s funds to a close relative without an acceptable reason.

According to the subpoena application, Ritaluoma used a total of about 320,000 euros of company funds for travel tickets and accommodation expenses in the years 2011–2014. A maximum of half of them can be considered acceptable by the prosecutors.

“The purchases have been partly completely unnecessary from the point of view of the company’s operations, and partly considerably expensive and wasteful, especially with regard to Ritaluoma’s own travel and accommodation”, the prosecutors state about the travel and accommodation expenses in the subpoena application.

Prosecutors According to Ritaluoma, he was always aware of Sunny Car Center’s financial difficulties. The company’s operations were significantly loss-making throughout its entire period of operation. At no point did it have sufficient funding to implement the project.

According to the prosecutors, Ritaluoma also failed to report 115,400 euros of rental income and 103,000 euros of salary income to the tax authorities.

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Ritaluoma denies all charges. He does not consider that he has disposed of or handed over the company’s property to anything unjustified.

“There has been a justified reason for the payments related to the start of the company’s business. The payments have been necessary to start the business and to maintain the possibility that the company will not become insolvent. Later, it turned out that Ritaluomaa was deceived in the matter by the investor candidates to whom the payments referred to in the indictment were made. At the time of making the payments, Ritaluoma did not have any information on the basis of which the payments should have been withheld,” states the preliminary response prepared by Ritaluoma’s defense.

According to Ritaluoma, the transfers of funds abroad did not cause Sunny Car Center’s insolvency.

The actual main hearing of the trial will begin later in the year.

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