The confiscation of company shares and assets worth over 10 million euros has been ordered from a person linked to Catania organized crime
The State Police and the Financial Police of Padua, through the personnel of the Anti-Crime Division of the Police Headquarters and the Provincial Command of the Financial Police, have executed a confiscation decree, issued by the District Prevention Measures Section of the Court of Venice, on the proposal of the Police Commissioner of Padua, following asset investigations against a person linked to a Catania clan of "Cosa Nostra", the outcome of which revealed the availability of assets, indirectly attributable to him, of a disproportionate value compared to the declared income or considered to be the result of the reuse of illicit supplies.
The provision in question, in its non-definitive state, made it possible to confiscate the shares of 17 joint-stock companies, 13 properties and 3 lands, located in the provinces of Belluno, Milan, Venice and Vicenza, as well as 3 cars, for a total value quantified as 10 million and 700 thousand euros. The assets subject to restrictions were entrusted to the judicial administrator appointed by the aforementioned Court.
The property investigations, carried out by the Anti-Crime Police Division of the Padua Police Headquarters and by the Company of the Guardia di Finanza of Este, concerned a subject burdened by various precedents, among which stand out a conviction issued by the Court of Appeal of Catania (which became irrevocable in December 2022) in relation, among other things, to the crime of mafia-type association, and a further, recent conviction by the Court of Rovigo, confirmed in the Court of Appeal (although with a sentence that did not become final), for the crimes of association for crime and fraud.
The proposal - already subjected to a definitive patrimonial prevention measure, issued by the Judicial Authority of Catania - was deemed socially dangerous by the lagoon judges on the basis of the provisions of the so-called "Anti-Mafia Code" and the aforementioned danger manifested itself, ultimately, in the province of Padua, where the organizational base of a complex pyramid system of companies, directed by the latter, instrumentally used to perpetrate scams in northern Italy, was apparently rooted.
Furthermore, the existence of the objective requirement of the clear disproportion between the small incomes declared in the last five years and the value of the assets attributable to the proposed person (accumulated between 2018 and 2022, in a period, therefore, following the events relating to the to the previous judicial ruling), also considered to be the result of the reuse of illicit profits, the legitimate origin of which was not adequately justified.
The investigations carried out, therefore, made it possible to demonstrate that part of the assets were held, among other things, through 17 shell companies (subject of today's preventive confiscation), three of which, based in the province of Padua, already recipients, in May 2022, of anti-mafia disqualification information issued by the Prefect of the aforementioned capital.
These companies would have been used as a vehicle to commit a series of scams to the detriment of unsuspecting suppliers who, reassured by artificial balance sheet data and unsuspecting frontmen, had sold goods worth several million euros without receiving recognition of the sales price.
The nerve center of such fraudulent conduct was located in the Padua area, despite the fact that the registered office of the companies had also been formally established in other provinces (including Brescia, Catania, Milan, Monza, Rome, Syracuse, Turin, Udine and Venice), in order to make the reconstruction of criminal activity more difficult.
Therefore, thanks to the valorisation of all the elements acquired by the investigators, it was possible to trace the assets back to the recipient of the confiscation prevention measure, carried out by the Fiamme Gialle and the State Police.
The joint operation of the Guardia di Finanza and the State Police is part of a broader strategy of attacking wealth of illicit origin, pursued using the incisive tools offered by the anti-mafia legislation, and also takes on a significant "social" value, allowing the return to the community assets accumulated over time by crime.