Escape, kidnapping of millionaire at Busto Arsizio petrol station

The lower prices offered by the petrol station were the result of VAT evasion

MILAN – Invoices for operations that were never carried out, to evade VAT and charge lower prices on fuel, damaging competing companies. The financial police of Varese he seized approx 1.5 million euroson the basis of a decree from the judge for preliminary investigations of Busto Arsizio, to a company in the province active in the marketing of fuels. The same company was already hit last September by the same provision for more 1.2 million euros. The Fiamme Gialle investigations started in 2022 from a tax audit by the economic-financial police unit of Varese and were then coordinated by the Busto Arsizio prosecutor’s office.

The Yellow Flames have spotted a complex fraud mechanismimplemented through the issuing and use of invoices for non-existent operations for over 6.7 million euros, also achieved with the involvement of companies “paper mills“, with the aim of evading VAT and with the prospect of applying lower prices on the market, damaging honest entrepreneurs.

The evaded VAT is estimated at approximately 2.7 million and is the illicit profit of the tax fraud carried out, using hundreds of false invoices in the years from 2017 to 2020. The legal representative of the company is held responsible, accused of fraudulent declaration. The owner of the company is punishable with imprisonment from 4 to 8 years and with confiscation, in the event of conviction, of the profit from the crime or of the assets of which the offender has access, for a value corresponding to the profit, the so-called ” seizure for equivalent”.

The judge issued the precautionary measure of direct and equivalent preventive seizure of a sum equal to the VAT evaded, to be carried out against the company and, since it proved to be incompetent, against its director, an 80-year-old from Gallarate. The first seizure, of just over 1.2 million euros deposited in company accounts, occurred at the end of last summer; a second seizure concerned further money present in the company’s coffers, the share of ownership of two properties, a car and a motorbike registered in the name of the legal representative, for a total value of over 500,000 euros.