Entrepreneur arrested for exploiting employees: he paid EUR 4 per hour. 27 million seized

He paid his employees EUR 4 per hour for more than 50 hours of work per week, subtracted part of their pay, limited their holiday entitlement, and in the event of an accident at work, passed it off as a domestic accident. For this reason, an entrepreneur who owned five supermarkets in Montepaone, Soverato and Chiaravalle Centrale, together with two other people, was arrested by the financiers of the Catanzaro Provincial Command, who also seized six businesses with corporate assets worth over 27 million euro.

The financiers, in execution of an order by the gip at the request of the Catanzaro Public Prosecutor's Office, also arrested and placed under house arrest a labour consultant and an administrative manager of the company, while two shop managers were ordered to stay in their municipality of residence. The five are under investigation for criminal conspiracy aimed at labour exploitation, extortion and the offences of ideological forgery committed by private individuals in public deeds. The joint-stock companies that managed the business activities were entrusted to judicial administrators appointed by the same measure.

The precautionary measures stem from the activities carried out by the Organised Crime Investigation Group of the Catanzaro Economic and Financial Police Nucleo, which included wiretapping and searches. The investigations allegedly revealed that the five suspects, under the directives of the owner of the companies and taking advantage of the condition of need and vulnerability resulting from economic precariousness, had imposed degrading and dangerous working conditions in the workplace on more than 60 employees, systematically violating the regulations on working hours and paying manifestly inadequate remuneration or in any case insufficient remuneration for the quantity and quality of the work performed (EUR 4.00 per hour, against a work performance of more than 50 hours per week) or subtracting part of the remuneration (with restitution in cash). In addition, employees were allegedly restricted in the enjoyment of their weekly rest days and annual holidays, which are guaranteed by law, with only two weeks of holidays per year, and were forced to work in environments that did not comply with safety standards.

The five, according to the prosecution, also allegedly failed to declare work-related accidents as such, but instead referred to them as domestic accidents, thus preventing them from obtaining the necessary social security and compensation protections provided by law. The labour consultant and the administrative manager, who actively supported the entrepreneur, were, according to the investigators, respectively in charge of drawing up apparently part-time employment contracts and false pay slips not showing the actual hours worked, and of the accounting management of the activities, collaborating in the drafting of employment contracts; the shop managers were delegated to control the employees, whom they demanded to work exhausting shifts, denying them the possibility of taking part of the holidays to which they were entitled. Moreover, when accidents occurred at work, they accompanied workers to hospital to force them to make false statements regarding the dynamics of the accident