The Guardia di Finanza of Rimini has discovered a maxi fraud that involved dozens of road distributors in different Italian regions, seizing assets for over 3 million euros and confiscating assets for over 34 million euros from one of the main suspects. The charges are criminal conspiracy and fictitious heading of assets.
The operation was named 'Steal Oil'. At the moment 46 people are under investigation for various crimes throughout Italy.
To have the reins of the scam three entrepreneurs from Rimini who managed fuel distribution companies. He is an Ancona resident in Rimini, a Rimini and a resident in Nettuno (Rome). The investigations of the Economic-Financial Police Unit have discovered how the suspects would have illegally imported into Italy, in just 4 months of activity and through the use of fictitious accompanying documentation, about 900 thousand liters of kerosene proceeds stolen in an oil pipeline of a NATO base in Belgium, destined for Greek companies.
According to the investigations, moreover, the karosene would have been mixed in an illegal deposit with diesel and regenerated oil, released for consumption and sold to unsuspecting customers as diesel through dozens of conniving fuel road distributors located in various regions of Italy. About thirty distributors checked and tested positive for counterfeit diesel reported to the judicial authority. According to the hypotheses of the Guardia di Finanza, the 'Steal Oil' operation has brought to light the existence of a criminal association based in Rimini, but also operating in Lazio, Umbria, Abruzzo and Belgium, considered responsible for a plurality of economic-financial crimes, including several fictitious company headers and also attempted fraud against the State, in relation to the illicit request for public funding charged to the EAFRD call of the Umbria Region. Among the accusatory hypotheses also receiving stolen goods, international smuggling of mineral oils and fraud in the exercise of trade, fraudulent subtraction from the payment of taxes, committed in Rimini and in the provinces of Rome, Latina, Naples and Lucca. "Excise fraud causes serious damage to state revenues and distorting effects on the rules of free competition - explained Colonel Alessandro Coscarelli, Provincial Commander of the Guardia di Finanza of Rimini -. In addition, the use of chemically altered petroleum products can cause risks both for the environment and for road traffic safety". Therefore, concludes Coscarelli "in this particular moment, the results achieved in today's operation are the demonstration that the attention threshold of the Corps is always very high and we must never lower our guard, in the interest and to protect the spending capacity of families"
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