Since the early morning of Wednesday 19 June, men from the Guardia di Finanza and the State Police have carried out – at the disposal of the Reggio Emilia Prosecutor’s Office – a search decree and two preventive seizure decrees relating to the illicit proceeds of an alleged multimillion-dollar tax fraud, issued by Investigating judge of the Emilian Court.
The investigation activity, renamed “Titano”, made it possible to identify a series of paper mill companies established for the purpose of issuing invoices for non-existent operations towards third companies in order to allow them to evade income taxes and ‘VAT, for the benefit of the so-called criminal gang. At the end of the investigation activities, it emerged that 44 companies had used, in their respective annual declarations for VAT and direct taxes, invoices for non-existent operations received from paper mill companies for approximately 62,000,000 in a time span ranging from 2018 to 2022.
The “Titano” operation mainly involved the provinces of Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, Mantua, Reggio Emilia, Parma, Modena, Naples, Rome, Turin and Verona.
The paper mill companies would be mainly attributable to a person resident in the province of Reggio Emilia already involved in the “Billions” operation together with other people involved in the same investigation and affected, at the time, by precautionary measures. In light of the investigative findings it was issued a preventive seizure measure against 8 companies present in the national territory and 9 of the legal representatives or directors of the same companies who allegedly obtained an illicit profit of 6 million euros.
In addition to the execution of the seizure decree, they were carried out 80 searches – also with the “Cash Dogs” of the Financial Police and the Warranty Information was notified to 50 natural persons reported at large for tax crimes
In particular, from what we learned, the paper companies appeared to formally carry out wholesale trading activities of petroleum products, construction machinery, packaging, computers and software, manufacturing of metal items and retail trading of products via the internet, while the user companies operate in the field of wholesale trade in packaging, construction and clothing.
