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False invoices to evade tax authorities, businessman arrested in Oristano
Connections to a criminal organization operating in the middle of Italy
A well-known businessman of Calabrian origin, but a resident of Oristano, Nicola Lombardo, 41, was arrested last night by the police and the financial guard, delegated by the prosecutor in the court of Reggio Emilia.
The businessman was charged with the crimes of criminal association with the purpose of committing financial crimes. As reported by investigators, through a nominee, Lombardo had opened some “paper” companies that produced false invoices and other accounting papers intended to defraud and evade tax authorities.
In Oristano in recent years man had opened and closed various commercial activities.
The operation is part of a larger police operation that involved more than 250 police officers and financial operators who, as delegated by the prosecutor’s office in the Reggio Emilia court, carried out 51 personal precautionary measures throughout Italy, of of which 22 in prison, as well as 106 real precautionary measures, for a total of about 24 million euros, issued by the GIP of the Reggio court.
The investigation called “Billions” allowed discovering a criminal association, made up of 49 subjects specialized in offering, in a “professional” way, “services” for the issuance of invoices for objectively non-existent operations, to allow beneficiary companies to reduce their base taxable, with the performance of various crimes in tax matters: issuance and use of false invoices in the return, concealment of accounting documentation and omitted tax return.
The researchers, through the services of wiretapping and environmental, observation and stalking, the analysis of financial flows and the deepening of reports for suspicious transactions, managed to identify a particularly complex associative structure also dedicated to money laundering, also in abroad, to self-laundering and the commission of fraudulent bankruptcy crimes.
As reported by the investigators, the alleged dismantled criminal association was in fact composed in a highly structured way: at the top were the heads who coordinated ten operational cells that could count on shell companies (true paper mills) for the issue of invoices for non-existent operations, of professionals “withdrawn” of money from ATMs and brokers of economic subjects interested in obtaining illicit financial services. At the lowest echelon of the organization was a large group of “nominated” owners of a myriad of “paper” companies that had no corporate structure and were only used to “produce” false invoices. An eloquent conversation, captured by the investigators, between two suspects who jokingly wondered ironically what their companies were producing. The answer: “they produce money.”
