VAT fraud in the IT sector: European Public Prosecutor’s Office dismantles a Naples-based criminal network

Brussels – The shadow of a massive tax fraud involving a network of shell companies capable of evading VAT in the IT and technology sector. Based on this suspicion, the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) launched a major operation in Italy, leading to the preventive seizure of four business complexes and an industrial warehouse in Somma Vesuviana (Naples), with a total value exceeding 32 million euros. 

The preventive seizure order, issued by the Preliminary Investigating Judge at the Court of Naples, concerns five companies suspected of involvement in a complex international tax fraud scheme based on “numerous Italian and foreign shell companies, lacking any real business structure,” according to investigators. These shell companies are reportedly based in various EU Member States, including the Netherlands, Germany, Romania, and Hungary, and were “allegedly” used to “simulate commercial transactions and generate undue tax advantages,” which could reach considerable amounts. “Overall, invoices for non-existent transactions exceeding 500 million euros were identified,” the European Public Prosecutor’s Office stated.

These false invoices, amounting to over half a billion euros, are believed to have been used to create fictitious VAT credits and artificially reduce the tax burden on the companies, which were linked in a way that made it difficult to trace the flow of funds. The whole operation was orchestrated and directed from Campania: the alleged network involves 64 suspects operating mainly in the province of Naples.

According to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Financial Police of Naples and Caserta, who conducted the investigations and the operation, “there is reason to believe that in many cases the goods involved were never physically moved,” remaining at the same logistics hubs while a number of fictitious transactions were recorded between the companies involved. 

This is not the first investigation into carousel fraud in Italy, an EU country that continues to prove a fertile ground for such illicit activities. Overall, this kind of tax evasion has resulted in losses to the Treasury totaling hundreds of millions of euros.