(Luxembourg, 17 September 2025) – At the request of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) in Rome (Italy), the Italian Financial Police (Guardia di Finanza, Nucleo di Polizia Economico-Finanziaria di Bolzano) carried out searches and preventive seizures in Rome and Brescia, in an investigation into a €17 million VAT fraud scheme involving electronic products.
One person, considered the ‘de facto’ manager of several companies involved, was placed under house arrest in Rome. Three other suspects, acting as strawmen for the scheme, were prohibited from exercising business management activities.
Preventive seizures ordered by the Court of Rome amount to over €17.7 million and include bank accounts, credit cards, cash, vehicles, motorcycles, three Rolex watches and other assets. In total, seven searches were conducted to collect the assets and evidence of further financial flows.
The investigation concerns a criminal group allegedly responsible, since 2017, for a massive VAT fraud in the wholesale and retail trade of electronic products, involving companies based in Italy and other EU Member States. The group is suspected of systematically issuing and using false invoices through a chain of missing traders and buffer companies, enabling them to sell laptops, smartphones and PCs on the Italian market at abnormally low prices.
The fraud, estimated at around €17 million, gave the perpetrators an unfair competitive advantage over legitimate businesses and revealed suspicions of money laundering.
The initial leads came from routine economic monitoring by the Guardia di Finanza in Bolzano, which identified businesses offering high-tech products at prices well below market value. Further investigations uncovered the supply chain and the use of missing traders, often active for only a few months, created to conceal the true beneficiaries of the fraud.
All persons concerned are presumed innocent until proven guilty in the competent Italian courts of law.
The EPPO is the independent public prosecution office of the European Union. It is responsible for investigating, prosecuting and bringing to judgment crimes against the financial interests of the EU.