PORDENONE. The Pordenone Financial Police conducted investigations, delegated by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (deputy prosecutor Carmelo Barbaro), against a non-profit voluntary association, the Aeroclub Pordenone, from which it emerged that the same, formally dedicated to volunteering in the field of “Civil Protection”, in reality it had been conducting, for years, exclusively recreational sports activities, including for profit.
Even in the emergency period due to the pandemic caused by Covid, according to the Finance, no organization of the non-profit organization (people, vehicles and structures) found employment in the sector, despite the fact that the Civil Protection of Friuli Venezia Giulia was involved right away, with all the its resources (voluntary and otherwise) used daily in the area.
On the other hand, during the pandemic, the headquarters of the Association, also built with public funding, found use to host “airsoft” sports activities. The presence of personnel associated with the institution as a “civil protection volunteer” who carried out, substantially paid with fictitious “reimbursements”, activities of mere dependent work exclusively in favor of the same Association.
According to what was remarked by the Gdf, the non-profit organization, through artifices and deceptions, had managed to mislead various public authorities regarding the existence of the legal requirements for which it could obtain the tax qualification of “non-profit organization of social utility” (which provides necessarily carrying out actions in sectors of collective interest and of significant social utility, in favor of the community, whose purpose is exclusively the pursuit of purposes of social solidarity), thus managing, over the years, to receive public funding, disbursed from the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region and other public bodies, for a total of 560,000 euros.
Furthermore, as an “onlus” subject, according to the Finance Law, the association has unduly benefited, for years, from the public contribution, for a total amount of 26,500 euros, referable to the “5×1000”, destined for entities that carry out “socially relevant” activities.
At the conclusion of the investigations, three people were investigated by the judicial authority, who succeeded each other over time in the legal representation and management of the association, for the crime of fraud against the State, as well as the body itself for administrative liability.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office subsequently ordered the execution of searches against the non-profit organization and authorized the sending of the documents to other authorities appointed to supervise the body, with which the Corps carried out activities of collaboration.
In particular: the Jurisdictional Section of the Accounting Prosecutor of the Court of Auditors of Friuli Venezia Giulia in Trieste, in relation to the unduly received regional loans, ordered a seizure order for 560,000 euros, equal to the amount of the unduly received loans.
The Friuli Venezia Giulia Region has ordered the cancellation of the Association from the “general register of organized volunteering” and the Revenue Agency has excluded the Aeroclub from the list of beneficiaries of the five per thousand income tax allocation.
Furthermore, the Revenue Agency itself, precisely due to the absence of publicistic activities and the presence of activities that had made it less necessary to be considered a non-profit body, issued notices of assessment for a total of 393,000 euros (of which 204,000 for unpaid taxes and 189,000 for penalties).
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