The soldiers of the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Cagliari, on the orders of the GIP of the local Court, have executed a preventive seizure decree, also for equivalent, for over 2.5 million euros against a company operating in the city of Cagliari in the wholesale trade sector of various items managed by a family of entrepreneurs of Chinese origin.
The investigation developed starting from the results of a tax audit activity carried out by the Fiamme Gialle between 2022 and 2023 from which the hypothesis emerged that the company subjected to tax inspection was involved in a massive “carousel fraud” and had systematically used invoices for objectively non-existent operations which would have allowed it to reduce the taxable base to be subjected to taxation by over 3.7 million euros and not to pay VAT for over 815,000 euros. The mechanism, according to the hypothesis formulated, was as follows: a single tax document “format” was prepared and used for all “fictitious” suppliers; this tax document was registered to a company “not actually existing/operating” and the goods being sold were described in an absolutely generic manner, without any specification of the product code and type; then there was no indication on the invoice of the existence of a related transport document (which in the majority of cases did not occur) and the amount would have been receipted with an untraceable “cash payment”; this mechanism, according to the investigations carried out so far, would have been replicated dozens and dozens of times in the years from 2016 to 2021. In some cases, invoices for hundreds of thousands of euros issued by companies that ceased operations before the date of issue of the invoice itself would have also been accounted for .
The complex investigations then delegated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office at the Court of Cagliari – and conducted by the Economic-Financial Police Unit of the Fiamme Gialle at the headquarters – led to the reconstruction of what is believed to be a whirlwind “circle” of false invoicing – equal to over 315 million euros – issued by nineteen “paper mill” companies (with fictitious offices in many Italian regions, represented by frontmen of Chinese origin, characterized by failure to fulfill accounting, declaration and payment obligations; characterized by an unjustified and exponential increase in volume of business, the absence of an organizational structure, as well as the lack of suitable means and operational structures instrumental to the exercise of the entrepreneurial activity) through which it would have been possible to bring enormous quantities of goods into Italy – in evasion of VAT and duties – also by making undue use of specific customs regimes for importing products into the territory of the European Union.
The actual precautionary measure applied to the company subject to the investigations made it possible to learn about financial availability on n. 3 current accounts and to seize no. 4 cars. The operation is part of a broader framework of intensification of the economic-financial police activities carried out by the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Cagliari and aimed at combating tax evasion which constitutes a serious obstacle to economic development because it distorts competition and the allocation of resources undermines the relationship of trust between citizens and the State and penalizes equity, also taking away space for intervention in favor of the weakest social groups.
