Santa Maria Capua Vetere, online sales of electronic equipment: seizure of assets of entrepreneur

Santa Maria Capua Vetere. Today, the Guardia di Finanza of Sessa Aurunca executed a preventive seizure of assets worth approximately 2 million euros, ordered by the GIP of the Court of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, against the entrepreneur GP (born in 75), owner of two companies operating in the online trade sector of IT and electronic products, considered responsible for a large tax evasion to the detriment of the treasury perpetrated through the well-known system of "carousel fraud".

This time, however, the discovery of the traditional fraudulent mechanism was made even more complex by the peculiarity of the electronic market which, thanks to the use of specific digital platforms, allows for the easy exchange of goods and services even between several operators far from each other, through telematic transmission methods and the use of IT tools only.

In this case, the investigations focused on a particular type of electronic commerce called “Dropshipping”, consisting of a triangulation in which a supplier (so-called dropshipper), the retailer and the end customer/buyer intervene.

By exploiting this system, the investigated entrepreneur had managed to interpose dozens of shell companies scattered throughout Italy between his companies and the French dropshipper, whose sole purpose was to purchase electronics products on the European market and then resell them to the same companies without fulfilling any tax obligations.

Thanks to this interposition, the investigated companies were able to secure undue tax credits (otherwise not obtainable under intra-Community legislation if they had purchased the products directly from the French supplier) which were used as a deduction to reduce the VAT tax burden deriving from sales made to end customers.

At the same time, the relative tax savings obtained thanks to the described fraudulent mechanism (calculated to be in the order of approximately 2 million euros compared to the use of false invoices for approximately 9 million euros) allowed the entrepreneur to make such sales at more convenient prices than the market prices, thus causing an illicit distortion of free competition to the detriment of honest operators.