PALERMO (ITALPRESS) – At the request of the Milan and Palermo Offices of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), the Judge for Preliminary Investigations at the Court of Milan issued 47 restraining orders — 34 in prison 9 under house arrest and 4 interdictory measures — against the same number of suspects believed to be responsible, in various capacities, for conspiracy aimed at evading intra-EU VAT in the trade of IT products and laundering the related profits. In connection with the management of some companies for which bankruptcy proceedings are underway, the restraining orders also involve bankruptcy offenses. The recipients of custodial measures in prison also include 7 suspects for whom European Arrest Warrants have been issued, 4 of them located in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain and Bulgaria.
It was, also, ordered against the persons and companies under investigation the preventive seizure, also for equivalent, of assets, values and money for more than 520 million euros, identified as the total profit of the fraud, equal to the evaded VAT, and the preventive seizure for money laundering of a number of residential and real estate complexes with a total value of more than 10 mln euros located in Cefalù (PA), as well as other real estate compendiums attributable to some of the companies, falling within the territories of Chiavari (GE), Bellano (LC), Noli (SV), Cinisello Balsamo (MI) and Milan and Cefalù (PA),
The judge recognized for precautionary purposes for the leaders of the criminal syndicate the aggravating circumstance of having facilitated, by investing their profits in the VAT fraud sector, camorristic and mafia criminal syndicates and of having made use of the mafia method, especially in the key of settling conflicts that arose within the multilevel sodality between exponents of the different criminal organizations.
The investigation is the result of the convergence of two distinct investigative strands originated by the Nuclei di Polizia Economico-Finanziaria of Varese and Milan with EPPO Milan in the area of carousel fraud, and by the State Police – Palermo Mobile Squad and SISCO, with the investigative and operational coordination of the Central Operations Service – and the Nucleo PEF of Palermo, with EPPO Palermo, in the context of which emerged the finalization and participation in the commission of carousel frauds of members of organized crime of the mafia and camorristic type, managers of some of the chains of companies used in the circuits already under investigation in Milan and in charge, also, of the reinvestment of illicit profits. The two proceedings were brought together, allowing excellent investigative synergy thanks to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office’s operations throughout the country, enabling the Delegated European Public Prosecutors of Milan and Palermo to make a unified request for the application of real and personal precautionary measures, which was then accepted by the GIP of the Milan Court.
A total of 200 individuals are under investigation and more than 400 companies are involved, many of which are being charged with administrative offenses dependent on such crimes, as provided for in Legislative Decree 231/2001.
Contextual activities of execution of restraining orders, search and seizure are underway in the EU countries affected by the fraud and, in particular, in Spain, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, and the Netherlands, and in non-EU countries, such as Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
The investigation concerned a structured carousel intra-EU VAT fraud in the electronic/computer products trade sector that affected several EU countries (Holland, Luxembourg, Spain, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Romania), also involving 20 foreign companies, and also involved certain Sicilian and Campanian organized crime figures who, glimpsing the huge profits of the carousel fraud business, became part of it by providing financial supplies, thus also laundering the proceeds of other criminal activities. The numbers of companies involved in the uncovered fraud are imposing: 269 missing traders, 55 buffers, 28 broker companies and 52 foreign conduits, for a total volume of subjectively false invoices amounting to 1.3 billion euros, in the four-year period 2020-2023 alone.
– Photo: from Video Police-Finance Guard –
(ITALPRESS).
