Massive VAT Evasion Scheme Unveiled: Fuel Sold Below Cost Leads to €300 Million Seizure

Thanks to VAT evasion, the criminal association that was dismantled today by the financial police of Bologna, Naples, and Rome, coordinated by the EU Prosecutor's Office, was selling fuel below cost. They notified five house arrests, three obligations to the judicial police, but above all, they seized assets worth about 300 million euros owned by 59 individuals and 13 companies. The fuel sold in Italy was mainly imported from Slovenia and Croatia: to materialize the massive fraud aimed at evading the value-added tax, 41 shell companies based in Campania and Lombardy were used, which would have invoiced non-existent operations for over one billion euros, thus realizing a VAT evasion of about 260 million euros. According to the investigations, the gang of evaders consisted of 10 people, many linked by family ties: at the top of the corporate chain was a company based in Rovigo (and a tax warehouse in Magenta, Milanese), where most of the fuel was transferred. According to investigators, part of the proceeds, about 35 million euros, would then have been laundered by transferring the money first to the bank accounts of Hungarian and Romanian companies and then monetized with systematic cash withdrawals intended to be delivered to the heads of the gang. The operation was conducted by the economic and financial police units of Verbania, Rovigo, Rome, Naples, and Caserta, in collaboration with the Central Service for Organized Crime Investigation and with the II group Naples.