Catania, tax fraud with false invoices: precautionary measures for 15 people

The Financial Police of the Catania Provincial Command are executing a precautionary detention order against 15 people as part of an investigation by the Etna Public Prosecutor's Office with 29 suspects on an alleged fraudulent labour supply and tax fraud scheme through the issuing of invoices for non-existent transactions. The precautionary measures provide for prison for two of the suspects, house arrest for another four, and a prohibitory measure for the remaining nine. The alleged offences are, variously, criminal conspiracy, issuing invoices for non-existent transactions (Foi), untrue and fraudulent tax returns, and undue compensation of non-existent tax credits.

The Catania gip's precautionary measure, issued at the request of the Prosecutor's Office, also orders the seizure of 28 companies and of assets and financial assets worth more than EUR 8.2 million. 120 Guardia di Finanza soldiers from the Catania command are involved in the execution of the order, which is being carried out in the provinces of the Etnean capital, Caltanissetta, Messina, Siracusa, Ragusa, Trapani, Cosenza, Vibo Valentia, Naples, Rome, Viterbo and Varese, with the support of the local homologous provincial commands and the first Etnean group.

At the centre of the investigation by the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office is the activity of companies in the tourist-hotel sector in Sicily, Calabria and Lazio. Over the last five years, the fraudulent invoicing system, according to the prosecution, would have amounted to a total of more than EUR 56 million in taxable income and more than EUR 13 million in VAT, guaranteeing illicit profits to the criminal association of more than EUR 8 million, half of which would have been distributed to the organisers of the system in the form of professional fees, salaries, and expense reimbursements. The alleged fraud mechanism, which emerged from the investigations of the Guardia di Finanza, was allegedly based on a recurring operational scheme the establishment of legal entities in the form of consortia (Logatrans Consortium and In&out Consortium, with registered offices in Rome and Florence respectively) and consortium companies (more than 26 in succession over time, distributed between the provinces of Milan, Florence, Rome, Catania and Messina), all lacking their own organisation, means, and without the assumption of any business risk, and usually having a very short life cycle during which they would have accumulated, without honouring them, huge tax debts. According to the prosecution, the legal entities, legally represented by nominees, who often had no property and no skills, would have operated as mere labour reservoirs used exclusively to hire a very large number of workers, mostly from the companies that had become clients, and then made them available to the latter in the form of fictitious service contracts.

In reality, it would have emerged from the investigations, the workers would have changed neither their place of work nor their qualification, remaining, in fact, in the employ of their original employer to continue carrying out their ordinary tasks. The purpose, contends the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office, would therefore have been to outsource, only in appearance, the workforce, in order to obtain various advantages. Furthermore, the (only formal) stipulation of a contract would have allowed the clients to deduct the VAT applied on the (non-genuine) invoice for the 'alleged services' provided. The creators of the 'consortium system' are alleged to have obtained considerable illegal profits from the non-payment to the State of the tax debts (for taxes and contributions) accrued by the consortium and the consortium members, neutralised through undue offsetting with non-existent VAT credits deriving from the simulated purchase of capital goods from 'bogus' companies. This last operation would have been essential in the chain of the system because, by benefiting from offsets with non-existent credits, the consortium members would have been able to certify to the final customer that they had 'correctly' fulfilled their payment obligations by providing the certification of regularity of contributions or the Durc model

It would have been in Catania, in the office of the accountant Antonio Paladino, 61, originally from Monza, and his collaborator Gaetano Sanfilippo, 47, from Gela (Caltanissetta), the centre of the false invoice tax frauds at the centre of the operation by the Guardia di Finanza, which carried out a pre-trial detention order for 15 suspects. This is the reconstruction by the public prosecutor's office of the Etna region, which accused the two, who were the recipients of a pre-trial detention order, of being the promoters and organisers of the criminal association despite the fact that they did not hold any formal role in the consortia and consortium and despite the fact that these companies had their registered offices in various Italian provinces (Milan, Florence, Rome, Messina and Catania), sometimes in non-existent buildings or empty or disused premises. Paladino and Sanfilippo had already been the recipients of a similar measure in 2020 in the context of investigations for tax fraud conducted again by the Etna Financial Police, under delegation from the Catania Public Prosecutor's Office, with Operation Fake Credits.