The Financial Police of Messina has implemented a precautionary order issued by the Judge for preliminary investigations at the Court of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, with which a preventive seizure measure for approximately 1.7 million Euros, against four natural persons and a credit institution, as part of an investigation conducted in the sector of the undue receipt of construction bonuses.
The investigations, coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, concerning a fraudulent system designed to profit from the tax benefits introduced by Legislative Decree 34 of 2020 – the so-called “Relaunch” decree and subsequent additions – originated from the in-depth of some anomalous money movements, consisting of bank transfers arranged by the suspects themselves in favor of foreign current accounts attributable to them, citing “credit for the transfer of tax credits” as the reason for the operation.
Based on preliminary investigations, the financiers of the Guardia di Finanza Company of Milazzo therefore found that the huge financial flows, amounting to over 800,000 euros, in turn came from a credit institution which had monetized to some taxpayers the credits of the tax breaks attributable to the so-called dd. “ecobonus – sismabonus – facade bonus – building heritage recovery bonus”, transferred via the Revenue Agency's platform called “credit transfer”.
More in-depth investigations, therefore, consisting of the request for data from the Revenue Agency and Local Authorities, confidential inspections and complex bank investigations, have made it possible to reconstruct further large credits, obtained from the insertion into the computer systems of false declarations, specifically prepared by the suspects for the sole purpose of obtaining the tax advantages made available by the State for the renovation of the building stock.
In particular, the Fiamme Gialle Mamertine acquired through investigations how the applicants had not contracted the maintenance work to any company nor, much less, received any invoice corresponding to the amounts self-certified in the applications.
Furthermore, equally, not only was there no trace of any mandatory notification of the start of works, the so-called CILA/CILAS, at the competent Municipal Offices, but the suspects were not even owners of the properties or tenants, in any capacity, of the same.
The fictitious tax credits thus artfully created were therefore transferred by the suspects to a credit institution, for subsequent monetisation, even going so far as to split the overall amount, through multiple transfers, with the aim of evading the anti-money laundering legislation.