The network involves the Italian mafia. A VAT fraud network operating in Europe was dismantled and led to the seizure of assets worth 520 million euros, a judicial source learned on Thursday, specifying that around forty arrest warrants had been issued as part of the investigation. .
At the request of the European prosecutor’s offices in Milan and Palermo, a judge at the Milan court took these measures aimed at repressing a “criminal association whose objective is the intra-community fraud of VAT in the trade of computer products and the laundering of their profits”the prosecutor’s office reports 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 continue to be carried out in the European Union countries affected by this fraud, in particular in Spain, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus and the Netherlands, as well as in Switzerland and the Netherlands. United Arab Emirates, according to the same source.
50 billion euros a year
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni congratulated the investigators and said the success of the operation demonstrated “The Government’s commitment to the fight against tax evasion”valued in Italy at more than 80 billion euros each year, or almost 4% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Four of the people arrested under a European warrant within the framework of this operation, called “Moby Dick”, were in the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Spain and Bulgaria. The Milan judge in charge of the case ordered the preventive seizure of assets and sums of money worth more than 520 million euros. He maintained against the leaders of this network the aggravating circumstance of having “Favored mafia criminal associations”.
The so-called “carousel” VAT fraud costs the European Union almost €50 billion a year, according to the latest available estimates from Europol. These are several companies established in at least two EU member states. It consists of obtaining the deduction or refund of VAT corresponding to an intra-Community supply of goods even if this VAT has not been remitted to the interested tax administration.
