The European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) announced on Thursday, April 4, that dozens of searches and seizures took place and 22 arrests were made in Italy, Austria, Romania, and Slovakia in a probe into a criminal organization suspected of defrauding EUR 600 million from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility for Italy.

The searches and arrests were conducted as part of an international large-scale investigation led by EPPO Venice.

Eight of the 22 individuals arrested on Thursday have been placed under pre-trial detention, while 14 other suspects are held under house arrest, and one accountant was prohibited from practicing his profession. 

The premises of the suspects and the investigated companies have also been the target of searches and seizure of evidence, the European prosecutors said.

“On the radar of the EPPO is a criminal association suspected of orchestrating, between 2021 and 2023, a fraud scheme to obtain funds from the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), part of the RRF, the main pillar of the NextGenerationEU recovery plan,” reads the press release.

EPPO said that, in 2021, the members of the alleged criminal association applied for receiving non-repayable grants to support digitalization, innovation, and competitiveness of small and medium-sized companies, with the purpose of expanding their business activities to foreign markets. They are believed to have created and deposited false corporate balance sheets to show that the companies were active and profitable, while in fact, they were non-active, fictitious companies. 

The investigation revealed that, over two years, a network of accountants, service providers, and public notaries supported the suspects to successfully obtain EUR 600 million in non-refundable funds from the Italian NRRP. The suspects transferred the funds to their bank accounts in Austria, Romania, and Slovakia as soon as they received the advance payments.

“The subjects under investigation used advanced technologies, such as VPNs, cloud servers located abroad, crypto-assets and artificial intelligence software, in order to carry out the fraudulent conducts and to conceal and protect the illegal business,” EPPO said.

The EPPO is the independent public prosecution office of the European Union. It is responsible for investigating, prosecuting, and bringing to judgment crimes against the financial interests of the EU.

irina.marica@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Eppo.europa.eu)