The Guardia di Finanza has announced that the Provincial Command of Treviso, as part of the fight against tax fraud and the illegal interposition of labour, concluded a series of control activities in the logistics sector by discovering forged service contracts, amounting to seven million euros, used to disguise illicit outsourcing of workers. Twelve entrepreneurs have been reported to the local Public Prosecutor's Office Republic for issuing and using invoices for transactions legally non-existent, as well as for the offence of fraudulent administration of labour. In addition, eight companies have been reported for administrative liability criminal offence, as the tax offences were in their interest and to the advantage of the Administrators. Finally, at the administrative level, fines of €690,000 have been imposed for offences relating to the violation of labour legislation.

The Guardia di Finanza has specified that the companies involved There are 14 in the fraud, including an active Treviso cooperative mainly in the logistics sector, with about 180 workers and an average annual turnover of four million and 13 client companies, all located in the province of Treviso except for two with offices in Bergamo and Reggio Emilia.

The investigations, conducted by the Treviso Group, have been launched following a tax audit of the cooperative Treviso, which, in the fraudulent mechanism brought to light, had the task of supplying workers. The Guardia di Finanza has underlined that what has been brought to light is a phenomenon insidious and serious because it concerns the world of work, the protections are circumvented through the distorted use of a legal transaction, the contract for services, concluded with undertakings that they only formally employ the workers and carry out the the related tax and social security obligations: in reality, the relations between clients and contractors are structured for the sole purpose of "interposing" between the workers and the companies they actually employ their own work activity.

By reconstructing the "labour supply chain", it is It was noted that the employment relationships with the various clients were devoid of the elements that characterise lawfulness of the contract, i.e. the business risk and the organisation of the of means and resources. First, from a series of sheets password-protected and e-mail protected between the contractor and the clients, it emerged the absence of risk, given that the consideration of the contracts was commensurate exclusively with the hourly cost of the members/workers provided by the cooperative (with the addition of a low profit margin), with no link to result. Secondly, a real and lack of work organisation and the exercise of the power of the cooperative, so that the workers administered were hetero-directed, i.e. subject to management and control by the clients, while remaining at the Cooperative contractor only administrative tasks. In in particular, workers, in the performance of services, were subject to the directives and indications provided by them the cooperative's end customers, who decided on the tasks to be carrying out, the timetables and the methods of execution; In some cases, The workers stamped their attendance at the clients' premises. In addition, it turned out that the cooperative issued the invoice only after receiving confirmation from customers that the calculation is correct employees' working hours. Hence, the non-existence invoices issued by the cooperative, resulting in the Recovery of value added tax unduly deducted by the client companies.