The Danish tax authority SKAT is investigating some DKK 1,000 billion that Danish companies and private individuals have transferred to and from some 55 tax havens, according to a TV-avisen report.

In the light of SKAT’s new figures, Minister for Taxation Troels Lund Poulsen (Lib) has promised the authority extra resources to continue investigations into what is being billed as the biggest Danish tax scandal ever.

“The figures are way above what I had feared,” Poulsen tells DR Nyheder.

The data has been collated under SKAT’s Money Transfer project, which claims to have uncovered large transfers to tax havens over the past five years, despite bank reticence in releasing figures.

“We can see that transfers back and forth between Denmark and tax havens have amounted to some DKK 1,000 billion. I think it would be strange if it was all legal. But I would like to point out that a large part will be legal,” SKAT Unit for Financial Crime Executive Preben Buchholz Hansen tells DR Nyheder.

Both SKAT and Minster for Taxation Poulsen say that not all transfers can be seen as illegal, dspite suspect destinations such as the Bahamas and Cayman Islands.

“I expect this new project to be much greater than the credit card project. It means that there is a lot of money we potentially have not received,” says Poulsen.

SKAT’s credit card project investigated credit card transactions and is expected to net about DKK 500 million for the Treasury.