Facade bonuses, fictitious tax credits seized for almost four million euros

TRIESTE – The financiers of the provincial command of Trieste have recently carried out the preventive seizure of fictitious tax credits with a total nominal value of 3,750,000 euros. The provision, issued urgently by the investigating judge’s office at the Court of Trieste, at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, has the aim of preventing the compensation or monetization of these tax credits, all accrued in 2021, originated by falsely certifying to the financial administration’s electronic portal the completion of building recovery works linked to the so-called “facade bonus”. In order to illicitly benefit from the construction bonuses connected to the transfer of accrued credits, starting from 2022, a construction company located outside the region was able to accumulate a significant nominal amount of fictitious tax credits which, through subsequent transfer operations to third parties, were were menetized at the Italian Post Office. It was precisely the analysis of the management of an individual company based in Trieste, operating in the thermo-hydraulic sector, which led the soldiers of the economic-financial police unit to identify and reconstruct all the operations preceding the purchase of a credit tax with a nominal value of half a million euros, transferred by the construction company that had fraudulently originated it. The purchase operation was in fact immediately considered suspicious, as it was defined without the apparent payment of any consideration by the Julian entrepreneur, as the transferee. In reality, the actual benefit for the latter occurred precisely with the possibility of monetizing the amount of the credit, a fictitious credit of which both the seller and the buyer were, following the investigations carried out, perfectly aware. The transformation of the credit into liquid money took place, immediately after its purchase, at a Poste Italiane counter located in Trieste, in an absolutely easy way, even if the operation carried out allowed its identification by the Trieste financial police , which proceeded to reconstruct the methods of credit formation. The crimes committed against, in addition to the Julian entrepreneur, also a further twelve subjects involved in the sale of fictitious tax credits resident in Veneto, Lombardy, Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and Calabria, are attributable to aggravated fraud against the State , self-laundering and reuse of illicit proceeds unduly received. The ultimate aim of the discovered fraud system was in fact precisely to obtain the liquidation, in the quickest and most unsuspecting way possible, of the artificially produced tax credits and to equally quickly re-use the money thus obtained in the legal economic circuit, to make further profits.