Holiday bonus: Gdf unmasks fraud through social media and non-existent electricity expenses of closed hotels

There is no peace for tax credits. After the multibillion-dollar frauds involving the facade bonus, those construction in general, the 110% or even the tax credit for Aid to Economic Growth of Enterprises, better known as Ace, in the list of illegally used tax benefits, the vacation bonus, the one introduced in the midst of the pandemic by the Conte government with the relaunch decree to support the tourism sector hard hit by the lockdowns following Covid. It was the Rimini Provincial Command that uncovered the fraud in this hot summer after four years.

In the middle of August 2024, in fact, the Financial Police of the Rimini Provincial Command carried out a number of preventive seizures issued by the Public Prosecutor's Office of movable and immovable assets worth over one million euro. The seizure concerned companies managing seven well-known hotel facilities on the Romagna Riviera. The seizure involved, explains a Gdf note, large sums of cash, luxury watches, and jewellery. Ten people were investigated for various reasons of criminal conspiracy, fraud against the State, and aggravated fraud to obtain public funds.

Specialists from the Nucleo di Polizia Economico Finanziaria (Economic and Financial Police Nucleus) took to the field, who, with the support of reports provided by the Nucleo Speciale Spesa Pubblica e Repressione Frodi Comunitarie (Special Nucleus for Public Expenditure and Repression of Community Fraud), acquired the clues of a real fraud against the State thanks to the undue use of the tax credit of up to 500 generated by the contribution granted to large families with Isee up to 40 thousand euro for the payment of services and tourist packages offered in Italy by tourist accommodation businesses, travel agencies and tour operators as well as agritourism and bed & breakfasts. The contribution, by the way, travelled on the App IO.

The financiers from the investigation have revealed a complex fraudulent scheme involving the transfer of 'holiday bonuses' through the use of various social platforms. The codes, transferred in this way, were 'downloaded' by the hotels for 'phantom' stays that never actually took place and used to offset taxes or transferred to suppliers as tax credits. The winning weapon was once again the use of the Gdf's computer backbone and the cross-referencing of data. The technicians monitored social networks as well as numerous details of hotel functionality, even going so far as to detect the flow of electricity supplied to individual facilities in order to prove that they were not in operation during the periods when the bonuses had been 'cashed in'. Some accommodation facilities were even closed as a result of compulsory orders issued by the municipalities of Rimini and Riccione. The vastness of the reconstructions made it possible to identify over 2,800 bonuses illegally obtained and to connect over 50 lawsuits for fraud that had been filed throughout the country.