“Escape Room”: alleged VAT carousel broker arrested near Rotterdam, €3.5 million seized

In an escape room you get an hour to find the way out. In the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) investigation code-named “Escape Room”, one man allegedly had almost a year's grace… and went looking not for the door but for a new company. On 22 September 2026, the EPPO announced the arrest of a further suspect in the Netherlands in this carousel VAT fraud case involving electronic devices, along with the seizure of assets worth an estimated €3.5 million. Like everyone else in the case, he is presumed innocent.

According to the Dutch Fiscal Information and Investigation Service, the FIOD, the man, a 43-year-old from Rotterdam, was arrested on Wednesday 16 September. His home and three business premises in Capelle aan den IJssel, on Rotterdam's eastern edge, were searched. Brought before an examining magistrate (rechter-commissaris) on 18 September, he was remanded in custody for 14 days. He is suspected of tax fraud, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation.

The carousel's broker

According to the EPPO, the suspect allegedly acted as a broker in the carousel: an intermediary between companies in the chain who claimed VAT refunds to which he was not entitled from the tax authorities. The FIOD spells out the alleged mechanism: since 2024, his company is said to have wrongly deducted VAT on goods sourced from the fraudulent network while declaring too little VAT on its own sales.

The damage attributed to this suspect alone is put at around €4 million to the Dutch Tax and Customs Administration and the EU, through unpaid VAT and improperly claimed refunds. Investigators seized real estate, a car, stock, receivables and bank accounts; the FIOD also lists cash, an expensive watch, paper and digital records and some 5,000 goods. Total: roughly €3.5 million.

After the raids, the “buffer company”

This is the detail that makes the code name sing. According to the EPPO, after the October 2025 operation, the suspect initially carried on through a buffer company, an intermediary used to facilitate the scheme, before moving the business to a newly established company. In other words, while eight people were being arrested in the same case, the merry-go-round allegedly kept spinning, merely repainted with a new company name.

A quick refresher: in carousel fraud, goods move between companies in several member states, exploiting the VAT exemption on intra-EU supplies. A “missing trader”, which the Dutch rather vividly call a “ploffer” (the one that goes pop), collects VAT from its customers and vanishes without paying it over. Further down the chain, a broker deducts it or claims it back. The state ends up refunding VAT it never received.

Six countries and hundreds of shell companies

The suspect is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. The investigation targets criminal networks suspected of pushing millions of electronic devices through fraudulent chains spanning six member states: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland. According to the EPPO, the network relied on hundreds of shell companies, forged documents and fictitious invoices to disguise the transactions.

Between 15 and 27 October 2025, dozens of searches were carried out across those six countries, led by EPPO offices in Rotterdam, Brussels, Graz and Katowice. Eight suspects were arrested in Belgium, the Netherlands and Poland. Investigators seized 22 servers and three routers, plus cash, jewellery, a vehicle and possibly counterfeit electronic devices. The EPPO said at the time that members of the groups had attempted to launder nearly €80 million.

The meter has since kept running. In October 2025, the Dutch loss was estimated at €14.5 million; the EPPO now puts it at €22 million in unpaid VAT in the Netherlands, plus €47 million in Belgium. That is about €69 million for those two countries alone. In 2025 the EPPO also noted links between some suspects and people in its “Admiral” and “Midas” investigations; “Admiral” was unveiled in 2022 as a VAT fraud estimated at €2.2 billion.

Europe's carousel season

The arrest caps a busy autumn for the European Public Prosecutor, which since 2021 has had jurisdiction over cross-border VAT fraud above €10 million. Magouilles & Compagnie has recently covered the “Money Cat” investigation run from Cologne over masks and packaging, a Venice case and the Czech “Echo” probe. Same recipe every time: humdrum goods, short-lived companies, invoices in cascade. In the Netherlands the EPPO worked with the FIOD; in 2025 the operation also involved, among others, Austria's anti-fraud office, Belgium's federal judicial police, Polish customs and police, the Latvian tax and customs police, Berlin's tax investigators and Europol.

What next?

The suspect has been neither tried nor convicted. The EPPO stresses that all persons concerned are presumed innocent until proven guilty by the competent courts. The investigation must still establish each person's role, the final loss and what became of the money. This article draws on EPPO statements (October 2025 and September 2026), the FIOD and European press reports.

Magouilles & Compagnie verdict

Magouille or calomnie? There is an arrest, there are seizures and an alleged €69 million network, but no judgment. If the suspicions hold, the suspect watched eight teammates go down and chose… to open a new company. Holding verdict: Escape Room: he found the way out in the end. It opened onto a cell.