Cava de’Tirreni, they cheat VAT by selling “Airpods”

The Financial Police of As and that of Latina are executing a preventive seizure decree and equivalent up to the amount of 29.3 million against two suspects for a huge VAT fraud in the trade of goods “airpods”. Apple Bluetooth headphones. The activity of the Fiamme Gialle was ordered by the investigating judge of Latina who accepted the request of the European delegated prosecutor Milano e Roma. The two suspects, who already ended up under house arrest in another phase of the investigation, are from Reggio Emilia e Cava of the Tyrrhenians.

The investigations revealed, we read in a note from the Gdf, that they had designed a complex and branched system of “carousel fraud” which affected several countries such as Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Slovakia, Poland, Slovenia, Hungary, Estonia and Switzerland. “Through financial investigations, shadowing and wiretaps, the financiers – we read in the communication – they reconstructed the sophisticated VAT evasion system based on the marketing of electronic products, especially Apple AirPods, which were cyclically sold between the companies involved in the fraud without ever reaching final consumers. The earphones, essentially always the same, were sold by compliant community suppliers to various Italian companies, often simple empty boxes without operational structures and registered in the name of frontmen, passing from hand to hand only on paper, to finally reach the companies benefiting from the fraud which provided their export abroad preparatory to the start of a new cycle».

According to this reconstruction, the goods «it underwent physical movements limited to transfers to and from abroad, passing from property to property but remaining stationary in the various logistical depots used by the criminal organization, one of which was located in the Como area. In essence, the electronic products, once imported into Italy, were sold below cost to the various corporate bodies, resulting in the total evasion of value added tax in the first phase of marketing. After several sales, the last purchasing companies, actually existing and operating on the market, resold the AirPods abroad, obviously to compliant transferees, without the application of VAT (as required by current legislation), thus managing to accrue fictitious credits of tax, generated by previous purchases, which were used to offset the taxes to be paid or requested for reimbursement from the Revenue Agency».

The first phase of the investigations had led in 2023 to four precautionary custody orders (two in prison and two under house arrest) against the main organizers of the fraud held responsible for criminal conspiracy aimed at commissioning the issuing of invoices for non-existent transactions and fraudulent declaration through the use of invoices for non-existent transactions.