Gdf uncovers fraud on building bonuses, fictitious credits of over 1.5 billion euro discovered

A system for fraudulently obtaining state subsidies for building bonuses has been reconstructed by the Guardia di Finanza. The value of the fictitious credits discovered amounted to more than EUR 1.5 billion. In particular, the Guardia di Finanza officers of the Naples Economic and Financial Police Nucleus and the Avellino Group executed an order of the Avellino Court's Judge of Preliminary Investigation, which ordered the application of 14 personal precautionary measures against as many people accused of criminal conspiracy, aggravated fraud for obtaining public funds, money laundering and self-laundering. Four people were arrested, seven ended up under house arrest and the other three were subjected to an obligation to present themselves to the judicial police, an obligation to stay and the interdictory measure of a ban on practising the profession of accountant for a period of one year.

The investigations, coordinated by the Avellino Public Prosecutor's Office and started also through the risk analysis carried out in cooperation with the Contrasto Illeciti Department of the Revenue Agency, allowed to reconstruct, a complex criminal design aimed at illegally obtaining state contributions related to the so-called building bonus, in this case concerning energy requalification interventions (ecobonus) generated through the use of nominees, who were formally entrusted with the administration and legal representation of compliant companies, in order to direct the sums of money illegally obtained to their accounts. The members of the organisation were also responsible for submitting to the Inland Revenue Office the notification of works to be admitted to subsidies, works that had in fact never been carried out or even concerning cadastral properties that did not exist. The fraud, which was also conceived thanks to the involvement of people with specific professional skills, resulted in an amount of EUR 2,771,037,936 in expenses incurred for the works, from which fictitious credits amounting to EUR 1,654,786,540 were generated and, at the same time, credits amounting to EUR 90,111,044 were assigned, with subsequent assignment to several other legal entities or individuals, who used them to offset their tax debts for a total amount of EUR 17,545,366.

The transfers carried out were characterised by several anomalies, in particular the fragmentation of the transfer notifications to the Inland Revenue Service; the frequent interchangeability of the same persons in the roles of transferor and transferee; the absence of purchase invoices or the presence of amounts inconsistent with the declared expenses; the evanescent tax profile of the alleged executors of the building works; the inexistence, in almost all cases, of the declared cadastral data; the involvement of natural persons with no fixed abode, deceased or with criminal records. Having outlined the investigative framework quite clearly, at the end of the first phase of the investigation, in order to block the fictitious credits still present on the various tax drawers but waiting to be monetised and/or compensated, on 22 March 2023, an initial emergency preventive seizure was carried out, subsequently validated by the gip of the Court of Avellino. Further investigative developments, thanks to the seizure and analysis of computer devices, made it possible to clearly trace the modus operandi used to commit the crimes, with the identification of new conduct against other persons and the consequent issuance of a second preventive seizure order aimed at confiscation for equivalent, issued by the Avellino gip on 23 September 2025, for the sum of €13,760,506.27, amounts transferred to Italian and foreign current accounts.