Gangmastering and aiding illegal immigration. These are the charges that the prosecutor’s office has formulated against six Pakistanis and an Italian woman following an investigation by the Trento provincial command of the Guardia di Finanza which, on the orders of the investigating judge of the Rovereto court, carried out the preventive seizure of assets worth 521 thousand euros against the 7 suspects and a company. The investigation, conducted by the financial police of the Trento economic-financial police unit and coordinated by the Rovereto prosecutor’s office, began following an independent investigative activity by the Guardia di Finanza: under the lens is a company from Vallagarina in the paper and cardboard production sector, managed by Pakistanis. According to the reconstruction of the investigation, “abusing the state of need of several compatriot employees, determined by the need for them to obtain a residence permit for work reasons and be able to support their family of origin in Pakistan, they subjected them to conditions of exploitation at work”.
Investigators discovered that the workers were hired on part-time contracts but forced to accept shifts from 9 to 13 hours a day. All contained in a ledger that allowed investigators to reconstruct work shifts and payments. “In the face of a formally correct pay slip with a monthly salary ranging from 1,000 to 1,800 euros, the employees, after receiving the credit, were forced to pay back to their employers in cash, a large part of their salary – the Guardia di Finanza reports -. In several cases, workers were also asked to go to money transfer companies to make money transfers to Pakistan to unknown people indicated by the employers themselves. The investigations allowed us to ascertain that, in the space of just one year, over 102 thousand euros were transferred abroad, illegally”.
From the reconstruction of the accounting data acquired, the financial police have ascertained that the employees, in fact, received a compensation ranging from 500 to 700 euros per month, equal to an actual hourly wage of 4-5 euros per hour. Although the company declared the availability of accommodation and meal vouchers for employees, to take advantage of them the workers had to pay a monthly sum of up to 200 euros in cash for a bed in an accommodation with 10-15 other compatriots and were obliged to do the food shopping, for approximately 150 euros per month, “at a shop attributable to some of the suspects, where, over the course of three years, the same persons cashed almost 22 thousand electronic meal vouchers, equal to over 152 thousand euros. All this allowed the investigated company the tax benefit given by the deduction of the aforementioned costs and, therefore, to lower the amounts to be paid to the State, via F24, both as taxes and as contributions at its expense.
