The European Prosecutor’s Office announced on Thursday the dismantling in the EU of a vast VAT fraud network involving the Italian mafia, leading to around forty arrest warrants and the seizure of property worth 520 million euros. . At the request of the branches of the Office of the European Attorney General (BPGE) in Milan and Palermo, a Milanese judge took these measures aimed at repressing an “association of criminals whose object is intra-community VAT fraud in the trade of IT products and the laundering of its profits,” indicates the BPGE in a press release. The investigation made it possible to estimate the amount of false invoices issued at 1.3 billion euros.
In addition to Italy, searches and seizures were carried out in the European Union countries affected by this fraud, notably in Luxembourg, Spain, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and the Netherlands, as well as in Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates, according to the same source. In total, 200 people and more than 400 companies are involved in the ongoing investigation called “Moby Dick”. The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, congratulated the investigators, saying that the success of the operation demonstrated “the government’s commitment to fighting tax evasion”, valued in Italy at more than 80 billion euros each. year, or nearly 4% of its gross domestic product.
Seven people are the subject of European arrest warrants, including four in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain and Bulgaria. Property and money amounting to more than 520 million euros were seized. The leaders of this network are also accused of having “favored mafia criminal associations”. In this case, it is a clan of Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian mafia, and two clans of the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia, according to the agency Ansa. Europol said in a statement on Thursday that “in Italy alone, 129 bank accounts are frozen and 192 real estate assets have been seized, as well as 44 luxury cars and boats.”
So-called “carousel” VAT fraud costs the European Union nearly €50 billion per year, according to the latest available estimates from Europol. It involves several companies established in at least two EU Member States. It consists of obtaining the deduction or reimbursement of the VAT relating to an intra-community supply of goods even though this VAT has not been remitted to the tax administration concerned. In this case, this “carousel” fraud in the trade of electronic and IT products involved several EU countries, including the Grand Duchy, as well as members of organized crime from Sicily and Campania (Naples region). ).
“Anticipating the enormous profits from the carousel fraud business, they entered this sector by providing financing, thus recycling income from other criminal activities,” said the prosecution. “Moby Dick is a decisive investigation for the BPGE. It has been some time since we started sounding the alarm about the strong involvement of dangerous organized crime groups in fraud against the EU budget,” commented the head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office based in Luxembourg, Laura Kövesi , quoted in a press release.
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