Florence, 1 July 2024 – Massive seizures in the jungle of cybersecurity companies touting. It is the outcome of a long and detailed investigative activity by the financial police, which lasted several months, aimed at combating the proliferation of illegal businesses in the tourism sector. In particular, the great business of tour operators who sell packages including entrances to the two most famous museums in the city, the Accademia Gallery and the Uffizi.
The Guardia di Finanza focused in particular on a company, managed by individuals originally from Sri Lanka who, replicating a model also developed in Rome, Venice and Barcelona, allegedly failed to declare revenues. for almost 800 thousand euros in three years of operations (2016, 2017, 2018). Not only that: during the Covid period, they would have benefited, without having the right, from substantial contributions provided for by the support decree and then diverted them to a tax haven.
The tour operator’s activity, the investigations have further reconstructed, is generated by the activity of tourist guides of various nationalities who fish for customers online but more often directly in the queue for entry to the two famous museums.. I tour operator they offer a package that includes group accompaniment and also wine tastings. Often, as the yellow flames have had the opportunity to note, the proposal turns out to be much lower than the promise: the Chianti tasting is nothing more than a glass of wine poured in the middle of the street – in front of the company headquarters – from a bottle of mediocre quality.
The guides collect the sums in cash or even through a POS. However, according to the Finance Police, everything is under the table. But when the investigators charged the two partners of the agency with the crimes of failure to declare VAT, concealment or destruction of accounting documents, fraudulent evasion of the payment of taxes, they realized that a third party, brother of one of the main suspects, had opened a new company which had effectively replaced the previous one. A way to continue the same activity (the new company has in fact ‘inherited’ the operational headquarters and the tourist guides, transforming them from employees to VAT-registered collaborators) and burdening the old one with liabilities and troubles. And one way also to “clean up” in order to access government contributions allocated during the pandemic which has inevitably affected tourism-related activities.
But the company in question, it emerged from the investigations, did not have the requisites required for the contribution and the money, which had just been disbursed they “flew” abroadmore precisely in a current account in the name of his brother, director of the old company, opened on the island of Jersey, a tiny strip of land in the English Channel with a particularly benevolent tax system.
In the meantime, while they await the trial, the Sri Lankans live the good life, at least judging by the ‘stories’ published on social media: dream cars, trips, luxuries. For this reason, finance has begun to attack their assets, carrying out a seizure on the accounts and company shares for over 800 thousand euros.
