The deal was too tempting not to be tempted by the Camorra: the head of a clan of Napoli center, and a former hitman from the Casalesi clan, among the 143 people under investigation who were about to “steal” 772 million euros from the State by illegally appropriating building bonus credits and rental subsidies, two measures included in the so-called 2020 relaunch decree.
A mega-scam that is close to a billion euros, given that in a similar investigation, concerning two brothers from Salerno, credits for 108 million euros were blocked. The architects were professionals who are now under the scrutiny of the Prosecutor's Office of North Naples and the financiers of Frattamaggiore (Naples), coordinated by Major Carmine Bellucci.
The Guardia di Finanza managed to secure the state's money but not that of the credit institutions, especially Poste Italiane, which has already carried out part of the transfers requested by the scammers to cash in on the credits obtained with renovation works that were never carried out and fictitious rental contracts.
Money, is emerging from the investigative activities, ended up in banks in Eastern Europe but that the financiers expect to be able to trace. The scam is developed exclusively via computer, specifically through the portal of the Revenue Agency "Entratel" and that for the transfer of credits.
The operators are highly trained specialists who have offered their services to the suspects, many of whom have claimed tens and tens of millions of euros in credit. One of the most striking cases concerns the owner of a sole proprietorship who, despite being in prison in the Caserta prison of Santa Maria Capua Vetere, was found to have carried out - but only on paper - renovation work using the building bonus for a good 30 million euros. But no replaced window frames, applied thermal insulation, installed air conditioners and solar panels, or even construction sites and companies were found.
The Guardia di Finanza's investigations have allowed them to discover the scammers' modus operandi and also their identities: in addition to the prisoner, they are also illegal parking attendants, people without VAT numbers, entrepreneurs 'for a day' and, as underlined, also individuals believed to be linked to organised crime, such as the boss and the former killer. The investigators have also identified the tricks used by the professionals of the construction bonus scam to get around the "blocks" of the police, diverting the credits also to third parties and then bringing them back to the fold for collection.
This technique was adopted by several professionals, each with their own business, who sometimes also came into contact to deal with common problems. According to the prosecutor Maria Antonietta Troncone, the fraud actually caused "significant damage to public resources" by undermining the implementation "... of the ecological transition, objectives that have in fact become more difficult to achieve" due to the actions of the scammers.
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