LPG Cylinders, Finance Police Blitz: Factory Seized in the Province of Caserta

LPG cylinders, blitz of the Finance Police: a factory in the province of Caserta seized. Also seized were 53.000 liters of liquid propane gas.

The financial police of the provincial commands of Frosinone and Cagliari have executed a decree issued by the investigating judge of the Court of Cassino for the preventive seizure of establishments used for the storage of liquid propane gas and the notification of the conclusion of the preliminary investigations against 14 people residing in Lazio, Sardinia and Campania. The latter, on the basis of the investigative findings, are seriously suspected, to varying degrees, of the crimes of fraud in the exercise of commerce, embezzlement, material forgery committed by a private individual, and attacks on transport safety in relation to article 1231 of the Navigation Code relating to failure to comply with regulations on navigation safety.

The Guardia di Finanza seized a factory in the province of Caserta, as well as 53.000 liters of liquid propane gas and 8.160 cylinders intended for filling. The judicial police investigations, initiated by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of Cagliari and continued by the Cassino Group, were carried out under the direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office at the Court of Cassino and allowed us to hypothesize illicit conduct in the trade of energy products - in this case, liquid propane gas in cylinders originating from Campania and destined for Sardinia - carried out by two companies operating in the same Regions. The modus operandi emerged from the Guardia di Finanza investigations.

According to the prosecution, the distributor of liquid propane gas cylinders, based in Sardinia, first appropriated, thanks to the complicity of retailers, approximately 100.000 empty containers, owned by well-known companies in the sector. Subsequently, in an energy products warehouse in Campania, the same cylinders were subjected to the so-called "washing", that is, repainting with company colors different from the original ones in order to conceal their illicit origin; then, identification tags were affixed to the cylinders bearing false data of periodic inspections, which in reality had never been carried out, and finally, to complete the work, the containers were filled, however with a quantity of liquid propane gas lower than that declared, and sent back to the final buyers by sea, hidden in trucks loaded on cargo or passenger ships between Sardinia and Campania.