Mafia pact on VAT fraud: crypto mixer to launder

It is estimated that the EU suffers between EUR 20 and 100 billion in VAT fraud every year. But establishing the real weight that these illicit schemes have on intra-Community transactions and on the tax, which is one of the four resources with which the EU is financed, is not easy. All the more so when one considers that evaded VAT ends up in laundering circuits often based on cryptocurrencies, which make the author of the transaction unidentifiable.

In the last three years, the European Public Prosecutor's Office (Eppo) has recorded a 360% increase in the value of ascertained damage: it has risen from EUR 2.5 billion to EUR 11.5 billion. Italy has been at the top of this alarming ranking since the beginning - that is, since the establishment of Eppo in 2021 (to which 22 EU countries adhere, excluding Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Poland and Sweden) - with a 300% increase in the value of ascertained damage (from 1.3 billion to 5.2 billion) and with a considerable gap with other countries. But it is certainly not alone in this exponential surge. In the last three years, for example, Germany has recorded a 297% boom (from 604.6 million to 2.4 billion), Portugal 489% (143.9 million to 848 million), Belgium 107% (from 233.3 million to 482.9 million) and France 624% (from 29.6 million to 214.4 million).

Many people, especially among the European institutions, claim that this new wave of ascertained VAT damage is due to a new police sensitivity towards this type of fraud. In reality, according to the investigators interviewed, the subject of VAT fraud has always been the focus of attention, especially in Italy, which has a historical tradition of economic-financial investigations. If anything, the problem lies in the schemes used by criminal organisations.

The classic carousel frauds have made a quantum leap, they have become 2.0 and are more attractive: they involve a network of front men and 'puppet' companies (i.e. without any real operations) that is often difficult to reconstruct, and which manages to move goods, false invoices and dirty capital all over Europe. An alarming context, in which a role would even be played by listed companies, with the effect of creating stock market distortions.

In the records of the latest investigation carried out by Eppo, which led to the arrest of 47 people, it was discovered that an Italian company listed on the Euronext Star segment of Milan was also involved in the 'planning of illicit transactions for VAT fraud'. In recent days, the company has denied any involvement to Consob, to the point of issuing a denial press release. The problem, however, is that Eppo's official documents have reconstructed its alleged illicit operations, through an unidentified person within the listed company who is alleged to have had dealings with fixers accused of orchestrating a vast half-billion euro fraud, with false invoices for 1.3 billion.