Fraud on covid 19 tax credits in Catanzaro, nine suspects and seizures for over 3 million

Catanzaro – The soldiers of the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Catanzaro, coordinated by the local Public Prosecutor’s Office, have executed an order with which the GIP at the Court of Catanzaro ordered, for a period of twelve months, the application of interdictory measures against three subjects due to the deemed existence of serious indications regarding the crimes, hypothesized in various ways, of criminal association aimed at committing tax crimes and of aggravated fraud for the obtaining of public funds within the framework of a illicit exploitation of the tax advantages provided for the implementation of the measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.

For two entrepreneurs, the disqualification measure from carrying out entrepreneurial activity was ordered; a temporary ban on carrying out professional activities was ordered for an accountant. At the same time, the preventive seizure of over 2.7 million euros corresponding to the value of tax credits assumed to be non-existent and of a further 765,000 euros as illicit profit from the contested crimes was carried out. The measures issued at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Catanzaro arise from the complex investigative activity carried out by the Economic-Financial Police Unit of Catanzaro. The complex investigations made it possible to outline – in the preliminary investigation phase which requires subsequent procedural verification in the cross-examination with the defense – the circumstantial gravity regarding the existence of a criminal association which, through a complex system of issuing invoices for objectively non-existent, would have worked to fraudulently acquire tax credits (in return for services never carried out for the sanitation and adaptation of commercial premises for an anti-pandemic function) subsequently used to offset tax debts by some companies attributable to one of the members or “monetised” through the transfer to third parties in good faith, including Poste Italiane spa (for approximately one million euros), misleading the Revenue Agency and causing considerable damage to the Treasury. The criminal case is pending at the preliminary investigation stage.