Missing Trader Ontology (MTO): an ontology for missing trader detection and Intra-Community VAT fraud prevention

Abstract

The increase in Intra-Community VAT frauds and, mostly, the development of fraudulent phenomena related to Missing Trader Intra-Community VAT frauds constantly pushed European Institutions to strengthen and to adapt enforcement actions, more preventive than in the past. The countermeasures adopted by EU States are often inconsistent and not properly effective, also because of the “techniques” used by criminal organizations and the celerity with which frauds are carried out. In the Artificial Intelligence era, a valid aid in the fight against frauds can be provided by the ontological approach which, in certain application domains, retains advantages over the neural approach. The development of application ontologies, as well as providing a unified definition of the fraudulent phenomenon, provides an element that can be processed by automatic reasoners for the missing trader detection and the MTIC VAT fraud prevention.