False procurement contracts for 18 million at Maap, the agri-food market in Padua. It is the result of an investigation by the Treviso Financial Police into the administration of work in the loading and unloading of goods.
The facts
29 companies were involved in the fraud, two of which were active in logistics, and 27 of their clients with offices in the provinces of Padua, Venice, Rovigo and Treviso. Most of these operate at Maap.
According to a note from the financial police, one of the two companies active in logistics “had been established for the sole purpose of hiring, with fixed-term contracts, employees have reached the maximum limit of contractual renewals legally foreseen, thus circumventing the legislation protecting workers”.
The financiers also discovered that the proceeds from the fraud were shared via issuing invoices for non-existent operations between the two contracting companies, for a total amount of 8.5 million. These companies therefore provided external personnel to clients, who could thus avoid signing a permanent contract.
The financiers, rebuilding the labor supply chain, they found that “the working relationships with the various clients were devoid of the elements that characterize the lawfulness of the contract, namely business risk and the autonomous organization of means and resources”.
Another element that emerged is “the actual lack of organization of resources on the part of the contracting companies, both with regard to the instrumental goods necessary for the execution of the services covered by the contracts, the rental and maintenance costs of which were promptly recharged to the contracting companies, and with reference to the exercise of management power over the workers employed, of externally-directed, i.e. subject to management and control by the clients, with only administrative tasks remaining for the supplying companies”.
In other words, “the workers they carried out the orders given by the end customers of the companies subjected to verification, who decided the number of employees needed daily, the tasks to be carried out, the times and the executive methods; emblematic is the fact that, in some cases, the clients personally carried out interviews with the workers that the contracting companies had to hire, also imposing specific contractual clauses on them and providing production bonuses ad personam“.
Preventive seizure and reporting
At the end of the investigation, the preventive seizure of properties, financial resources, cars and company shares for 1.4 million was ordered. Furthermore they were reported to the Public Prosecutor’s Office 30 entrepreneurs for fraudulent supply of labor and two companies were reported for administrative liability dependent on crime, as the tax violations were committed in their interest and advantage by the directors. Finally, fines of 2.5 million were imposed for offenses relating to the violation of labor legislation.
AND tax fraud in the transport and logistics sector were also discovered by the Turin financial police: also in this case, through the creation of cooperatives and the fictitious registration of joint-stock companies, taxes were systematically evaded, using illicit labor and failing to pay contributions.
A scheme, which according to the investigators, would have almost six million subtracted from taxation. By using invoices for non-existent operations and employing over two hundred fictitious workers, the company in question allegedly evaded over a million in taxes. A bankruptcy request was made to allow the tax to be paid to the company’s liabilities.
Following the flow of money, the financiers then discovered the existence of a second company, managed by the same people, guilty of further tax fraud for around 800 thousand euros. The three main subjects involved were reported for tax crimes, bankruptcy and corporate. The prosecutor’s office issued preventive seizure decrees worth over 1.8 million which made it possible to bind sums of money, real estate, financial resources, valuables, luxury vehicles and boats.
