ITALY – Today, financiers of the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Ancona, delegated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Trani, carried out, in the provinces of Ascoli Piceno, Teramo, Pescara, Barletta, Pistoia, Reggio Emilia and Sassari to a detailed precautionary measure issued by the GIP at the Court of Trani, at the request of the Trani Prosecutor’s Office, with which it was ordered the preventive seizure, also in the “equivalent” form, of availability and assets up to the amount of 15.5 million euros, at the conclusion of a complex investigation which made it possible to interrupt a complex and important fraud perpetrated in the fuel trade .
In this regard, in these very hours, a few dozen soldiers of the Fiamme Gialle of the Economic-Financial Police Unit of Ancona, with the collaboration of the Departments of the Corps competent for the territory, are affixing the seals on 32 real estate unitsincluding 2 roadside petrol stations located in the province of Teramo, a fuel depot in the province of Reggio Emilia, a resort located in the municipality of Arzachena, Baia Sardinia (SS), a residence located in the province of Teramo, as well as various apartments of value and land located in various Italian provinces.
The aforementioned provision represents the epilogue of complex investigations conducted by the Ancona Economic-Financial Police Unit initially under the guidance of another Public Prosecutor’s Office and then coordinated, due to territorial jurisdiction, by the Trani Prosecutor’s Office, which made it possible to dismantle an organization criminal, led by a forty-year-old entrepreneur of Apulian originsresponsible for having put in place, through the creation of fictitious corporate structures, completely tax-defaulting, a significant tax fraud in the trade of petroleum products and the subsequent reinvestment of the related proceeds in real estate activities.
In particular, the organization exploited a fraud system which involved the use of shell companies with which, using the instrument of “intra-community purchase”, at various refineries, managed to procure large quantities of fuel not subject to VAT on the purchase. These large quantities of fuel were subsequently sold by omitting the relevant annual VAT and income declarations or by submitting them without reporting the VAT or revenues relating to these operations.
The oil product, coming mainly from Slovenia, was first sold “seriously” to 3 “paper mill” companies formally located in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic managed by members of the criminal organization, and was then invoiced to 7 Italian “paper mill” companies which, in turn, they did not pay the tax due to the Treasury, although they collected it from Italian customers and omitted any subsequent declaration obligation.
The “paper mill” companies had, in fact, been established with the sole intention of remaining operational for a limited period of time, at the end of which they were “abandoned” (and therefore replaced), taking advantage of the fact that the administrative and criminal responsibilities , if and once ascertained, would fall on the (worthless) nominee formally placed at the head of the same.
At the end of all the various paperwork steps, the fuels obtained in evasion of VAT were resold, below cost, with an invoice, to entities owning networks of roadside distributors or commercial depots, often attributable to, or even coinciding with, the same entities that had created the “paper mills”, with the advantage, for these buyers, of being able to sell the same products at a highly competitive price, thanks to the immediate effects generated by thefailure to pay VAT (which in fact constituted the most direct and substantial profit of the activity criminal, to be distributed among all members of the association).
The massive tax fraud involved the illicit supply and sale of over 133 million liters of fuel and produced, in just a few years, illicit profits for the criminal organization of over 15 million euros. Given the purely paper nature of the companies falsely declared as intermediaries in the fuel trade, the full traceability of the proceeds collected from the competitive sale of energy products to the final distributors of the same to the natural persons members of the criminal association was established. Therefore, at the end of the investigations, the related tax investigations were also carried out which made it possible to propose for the recovery of illicit proceeds for taxation amounting to over 109 million euros and whose criminal developments saw the involvement of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Trani .
In relation to this last aspect, the GIP at the Court of Trani, at the request of the local Prosecutor’s Office, issued a preventive seizure order up to the amount of 15.5 million euros which was carried out by the soldiers of the Economic Police Unit- Financial institution of Ancona.
The seizure of the assets – formally registered to frontmen and real estate companies, but in fact at the disposal of the main suspect – comes as a result of meticulous investigative activity, conducted through the sifting of hundreds of current accounts, legal transactions and real estate transcripts. Thus, a huge patrimony was rebuilt, consisting, as already mentioned, of dozens of properties, many of which for hospitality purposes, fuel plants and boats, indirectly attributable to the suspect. It is represented that, due to the principle of the presumption of innocence, the guilt of the people subjected to investigation in relation to the matter will be definitively ascertained only if an irrevocable sentence of conviction occurs.
Today’s activity confirms the commitment of the Guardia di Finanza to combat fuel fraud which causes serious damage to state revenue and distortive effects on the rules of free competition also in GDF due to the infiltration of criminal organisations.
Copyright © 2022 Riviera Oggi, all rights reserved.
