Carbone (Dia Director): 'The F24 model is the new Kalashnikov of crime'

The link between mafiosi and entrepreneurs is undoubtedly represented by the 'white collars', as repositories of the necessary legal and financial know-how. Investigations have shown that they themselves recruited from among their clients those willing to make 'easy' tax savings. We have evidence of the involvement of legal professionals, lawyers and notaries, who by law have a central role in operations, such as the sale and lease of businesses for example, which are indispensable in the architecture of tax fraud schemes implemented through false invoices. The mafia without the company can do little.

Is the model of classical extortion with 'lace' thus outdated?

The model is now much more complex and has led to the emergence of 'mafia-involved' enterprises or the creation of real joint ventures between legal enterprises and mafia enterprises. The most classic case is represented by the transformation of the figure of the 'extorted' entrepreneur into that of the colluding entrepreneur, who turns to the organisation to claim a minimum amount of negotiating space and/or to request favours or support of various kinds, in addition to mere passive protection, e.g. the compulsory recovery of debts; coercive regulation of trade union conflicts; invoicing for non-existent transactions to evade taxes or to carry out fraud; availability of capital to be used in the company, stable inclusion in a system of illicit control of contracts. It is quite clear that the use of traditional mafia methods is not only unnecessary but also counterproductive. Intimidating attitudes are still used, but they are aimed at eliminating competition or recovering outstanding debts.

The fictitious tax credit is a fraud that directly affects public budgets. How does this phenomenon develop when it is carried out by gangs?

The clans have also shown that they can comfortably recruit droves of Italian and foreign 'trustees' and 'blockheads' who have no property, to whom they can register companies, current accounts, credit cards and prepaid cards. This relational network then favours them in recruiting compliant professionals - engineers, architects and surveyors - called upon to falsely asseverate, with imposing transfers of fictitious tax credits deriving from building bonuses, from the superbonus to the sismabonus, the technical requirements of intervention projects, their actual realisation and the congruity of the expenses. Not to mention that it has emerged that the provisions illegally obtained by the cosche from the transfer of bogus tax credits have in some cases been reinvested in traditional illicit trafficking, such as drug trafficking, as well as to take root in the real economy, like a real criminal 'metastasis' polluting economic and financial order and security.