GALLARATE – 50 million escape: the financiers of the provincial command of Varese arrest a third administrator of a “paper company” used for a huge transnational fraud. The handcuffs had already been put in place last November for a married couple always involved in the same ring organized to circumvent the tax authorities.
The paper mill companies in Gallarate
In this last case the “cartiera” companies had their registered office in Gallarate. The Fiamme Gialle soldiers have implemented a further precautionary custody order in prison issued by the Judge for Preliminary Investigations of the Court of Busto Arsizio, at the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office – Milan office, at the end of an investigation of interest the system of “carousel fraud” to value added tax. The same operation had already led to the arrest of two suspects, administrators of Italian companies issuing invoices for non-existent transactions.
Carousel frauds
The investigation by the Guardia di Finanza Company of Gallarate, conducted transversally both from an administrative-tax and criminal perspective as well as from an anti-money laundering perspective, led to the identification of a complex fraud mechanism in the sector of trade of air pods, hard drives and hardware IT, implemented through the issuing and use of invoices for non-existent operations by paper mills and buffer companies and aimed at evading VAT, thus subtracting taxes due for 50 million euros from the Treasury. The fraud mechanism involved issuing invoices for non-existent operations by “paper mill” companies (and “buffer”, which are a further level compared to the “paper mills”) with the purpose of evading VAT. Companies called paper mills are part of the so-called “carousel fraud” because they are used to import goods from EU member countries only on paper and then resell them in Italy without observing tax obligations. In this way the goods are placed on the market at a favorable price (usually equal to the evaded VAT) causing damage to honest competitors.
The mediator, the luxury watches and the rifles
In this specific case, following further investigations and investigations, the person who acted as an intermediary between the foreign companies, the Italian companies already identified and the end customers of the goods purchased as part of the fraudulent activity was identified. At the time of arrest the searches, also through the use of the canine unit cashdog, they handed it over to the financiers two Rolex luxury watches, Yacht Master and Datejust models which were seized as well as numerous smartphones and computer media, presumably used for fraudulent operations. During the search they are 3 rifles were also found, detained with weapons licences, which have been withdrawn and regarding which the Prefectural Authority has been informed in order to have the aforementioned weapons possession license revoked.
