Officers from the Portogruaro Group and the I Group Trieste of the Guardia di Finanza (Financial Police) have dismantled a system of illegal labour contracting in the logistics sector in Friuli Venezia-Giulia. The operation, called Dirty Delivery and coordinated by the Procura della Repubblica di Trieste (Public Prosecutor’s Office of Trieste), led to 14 people being placed under investigation and to the execution of two precautionary personal measures against the alleged main organisers of the scheme. In particular, the judge for preliminary investigations ordered one suspect to be placed in pre-trial detention and another under house arrest. Both are domiciled in the Trieste area. At the same time, a preventive seizure equivalent to more than €750,000 was ordered.
According to investigators, the organisation had structured a complex fraudulent system based on the irregular supply of labour and related tax fraud. The mechanism revolved around the creation and use of a network of formally independent companies that were in fact linked to the same group. These firms were often registered in the names of front men and used as containers for workforce. The companies acted as labour pools whose workers were deployed within logistics businesses, while the provision of labour was disguised through service contracts for alleged outsourced activities.
In reality, according to the Guardia di Finanza, these were only formal contracts used to conceal the irregular supply of workers, a mechanism often referred to as “grey gangmastering”. The intermediary companies issued invoices for legally non-existent transactions to the company that actually used the workers. The amounts invoiced essentially corresponded to the net wages to be paid to the personnel employed. Through this scheme, the user company was allegedly able to record fictitious costs and accrue undue VAT credits, while the VAT due was neither declared nor paid by the issuing companies.
At the same time, payments of social security and welfare contributions were allegedly omitted. According to investigators, this system caused significant damage to the public finances while also undermining the social security and insurance positions of the workers involved. During the investigation, a total of 120 irregular workers employed through this scheme were identified. Checks also led to allegations of invoices issued for legally non-existent transactions amounting to around €5.4 million.
The investigation involves ten companies considered suppliers of labour, whose names have not been disclosed by prosecutors, with registered offices in several Italian regions. Those under investigation live in the provinces of Trieste, Udine, Modena, Teramo, Venice, Foggia, Pesaro Urbino and Ragusa. Five of them also face allegations of criminal association, in addition to tax offences, violations of social security regulations and labour law irregularities.
During the operation, searches were carried out at twenty company premises and private homes linked to those involved in the provinces of Trieste, Udine, Gorizia, Venice, Padua, Trento, Milan, Modena, Rimini, Pesaro Urbino and Foggia. The Guardia di Finanza said the results of the investigation will also be forwarded to the Ispettorato nazionale del lavoro (National Labour Inspectorate), Inps (National Social Security Institute) and Inail (National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work) for further checks related to contributions, insurance obligations and worker protection.
