EPPO

The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Palermo (Italy) seized over €320 000 in assets and real estate, in an investigation, carried out in Calabria, into fraud involving agricultural funding.

According to the investigation, three suspects have forged statements to falsely declare ownership and possession of lands in the province of Crotone (Calabria), in order to obtain European Union agricultural funds.

One of the suspects had previously received an anti-mafia prohibition from the chief of the prefecture (prefetto’) of Crotone, which excluded this person from obtaining public funding, according to the provisions of the Italian Anti-mafia Code.

The suspects are believed to have committed an aggravated fraud in order to obtain EU agricultural funds, to the amount of €320 000, between 2015 and 2022.

On 22 March 2023, the  Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Agri-food of Messina (Reparto Carabinieri per la Tutela Agroalimentare di Messina) executed a seizure of over €320 000 in assets and real estate, in order to recover the damages to the EU budget.

On 4 April 2023, in a case investigated and prosecuted by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Milan (Italy), a judge of the Tribunal of Brescia convicted a public official of corruption.

The official was charged with having received bribes of €50 000 from a businessperson, with the purpose of softening or excluding the businessperson’s responsibilities, and those of some of his family members, from a criminal investigation.

The public official was a police officer of the Italian Financial Police (Guardia di Finanza), and an important member of the team that was carrying out an investigation into a large-scale VAT fraud, which was also coordinated by the EPPO’s office in Milan, in which the businessperson and his family members were suspects. The investigation into corruption revealed that the public official failed to provide the prosecutors with relevant evidence and information against those suspects. The investigation into the large-scale VAT fraud handled by the EPPO is still ongoing.

The judge sentenced the defendant to 5 years of imprisonment – taking into account a punishment reduction of one third, for having opted for an accelerated procedure. The judge also ordered the confiscation of €50 000 as proceeds of the crime, and the extended confiscation of additional property – believed to derive from criminal conduct – with a value of €473 775, having considered that the defendant could not justify the legitimate origin of these properties, the value of which was disproportionate to his lawful income and tax statements.

The investigation into corruption had been initially opened by the national public prosecutor’s office of Brescia. The case was then evoked by the EPPO, but the decision was challenged by the national prosecutor. The Italian Prosecutor General at the Court of Cassation decided that the EPPO correctly evoked the case in application of the EPPO Regulation, in the first and only case of conflict of competence between the EPPO and an Italian prosecutor’s office.

In an investigation carried out by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Palermo, Sicily (Italy), over €239 000 in movable assets and real estate has been seized from a company suspected of agricultural funding fraud. These seizures were made by the Carabinieri Command for the Protection of Agri-food of Messina (Reparto Carabinieri per la Tutela Agroalimentare di Messina).

According to the investigation, the company, an agricultural business, falsified statements and declared ownership and possession of lands in the province of Palermo, to obtain EU agricultural funds. The said company was not the actual owner of the lands, of which over 120 hectares are state property of the Sicilian region, and is alleged to have committed aggravated fraud in order to receive over €239 000 in EU agricultural funds between 2017 and 2021.

Additionally, the company under investigation had previously received an anti-mafia prohibition from the Prefect of Messina, which excluded it from obtaining public contributions, according to the Italian Anti-mafia Code.

In an investigation led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Bologna, a pre-trial house arrest warrant and a freezing order of over €1 million were issued by the Italian judge for the investigation working at the Tribunal of Macerata, at the request of the EPPO. Both measures affect an Italian company and its legal representative, and were executed yesterday (23 March 2023) by the Italian Financial Police (Guardia di Finanza) based in Camerino (Marche region, Italy).

According to the investigation, between 2021 and 2022 the suspected individual, in his capacity as legal representative of the company, submitted several falsified applications for subsidised loans and non-repayable funds. In order to fraudulently obtain the above-mentioned funding, the suspect put in place a series of illicit scams by submitting false information about the company’s yearly turnover, false inflated balance sheets, false receipts of submission of the balance sheets, false notarial deeds, false tax returns and false receipts of the digital submission of tax returns.

The analysis of the financial flows on the bank accounts of the company, to which the public funds were credited, indicated that the suspect, upon receiving the above-mentioned money, unduly laundering it to the bank accounts of several foreign companies. In total, he received nine different financial contributions from both the Italian budget and the EU budget (partially under the Next Generation EU programme), totalling more than €1 million.

The natural person and legal entity concerned are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in the competent Italian courts of law.

In an investigation into a complex VAT fraud on imported fuels, led by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in Bologna (Italy), the Parma Italian Financial Police (Guardia di Finanza) executed today, 23 March 2023, a freezing order of assets of up to €149 million.

The freezing order was issued by the Parma preliminary investigation judge, at the request of the EPPO, against five individuals and two companies involved in fuel trading.

The judicial decree to seize cash, bank accounts and real estate was executed in Parma, Potenza and Salerno.

During the searches, the Guardia di Finanza discovered millions of euros in cash hidden under the floor in the premises of one of the companies investigated, using ‘cash dogs’ – canine units specialised in searching for currency.

At stake is a suspected Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC) fraud – a complex criminal scheme that takes advantage of EU rules on cross-border transactions between its Member States, as these are exempt from value-added tax (VAT). 

The investigation concerns a suspected criminal group formed by three individuals, all Italians, working from Dubai, Miami and Salerno. They are suspected of having introduced petroleum products into the Italian territory from other EU Member States for their subsequent resale at a low cost, using a string of shell companies and a buffer company.

The fuel products were eventually sold to a company based in Parma, believed to have committed VAT fraud, which allowed it to resell the petrochemical products in question below market prices, thus obtaining an unlawful advantage over honest economic operators.

According to the investigation, the fuel products were imported via two EU-based companies from refineries in Slovenia and Croatia, using vehicles from a Croatian transport company ‘de facto’ managed by one of the alleged members of the criminal association.

In some cases, a Potenza-based buffer company was used between the Italian missing traders and the storage company based in Parma, which had the sole purpose of introducing an additional fictitious step in the commercial chain, so that the fraud would not be directly linked to the Parma-based company. The buffer company is also suspected of tax fraud.

In the course of this investigation, which was started by the Italian authorities and was evoked by the EPPO in 2022, a search warrant was already executed in June 2019 at the headquarters of the Parma-based company, which led to the seizure of a total of €1.5 million in cash, including around €190 000 in US dollars.

It is estimated that the scheme caused damages to the tax administration of more than €92 million, relating to unpaid tax since 2016.

The crimes under investigation include fraud against the financial administration, the issuing and use of false invoices, forgery and false or omitted declarations on VAT and income tax.

The investigation was carried out by the Parma Comando Provinciale della Guardia di Finanza.