Gangs and oil, assets for 80 million seized – Calabria

(ANSA) – REGGIO CALABRIA, MAY 29 – Assets worth 80 million euros were seized by the financiers of the Provincial Command of Reggio Calabria with the operational support of the Scico and coordinated by the Reggio Calabria DDA. The provision concerned 20 business complexes, 60 buildings, 86 vehicles and one million euros in cash and affected three Reggio entrepreneurs operating mainly in the petroleum product trade sector and was carried out in Piedmont, Lombardy, Trentino Alto-Adige, Emilia Romagna, Lazio, Campania, Calabria and Germany.
The seizure follows the Petrolmafie Spa operation of April 2021 in which the three were arrested.
The Petrolmafie Spa operation, which included the results of the investigations coordinated by the DDAs of Rome, Naples, Reggio Calabria and Catanzaro, had led to 56 arrests, 15 arrests and the seizure of assets for almost one billion euros.
In the Reggio area, called “Andrea Doria” and conducted by the Gico of the Economic and Financial Police Unit with the Scico, personal precautionary measures had been issued against 23 subjects, including the 3 entrepreneurs. They are the brothers Giovanni and Domenico Camastra, from Locri, aged 59 and 52 respectively, and Antonio Casile, aged 54, from Reggio Calabria. All three are currently on trial.
The operation, according to the indictment, had revealed a complex system of tax fraud, carried out in the petroleum products trade sector, based on fictitious corporate triangulations, aimed at evading VAT and excise duties, as well as on the use of false declarations of intent, an institution that allows you to purchase in a non-taxable regime. The association would manage the entire petroleum product distribution chain from the tax filing to
to the final roadside distributors, interposing a series of economic operators – “paper mill” fuel trading companies, commercial depots and local brokers – with the aim of systematically evading taxes. The “paper” companies fraudulently claimed, according to the indictment, that they possessed all the requisites to benefit from the facilitations provided for by the legislation, by purchasing the petroleum product without applying VAT. The product, thanks to mere “paper” transfers between the companies involved, was then sold at competitive prices to individual customers, to the detriment of honest entrepreneurs. Finally, the system for cleaning up the collections would also have taken place through ‘Ndrangheta families with interests in the petroleum product distribution sector.
In the light of the results of that investigation, the Reggio Calabria DDA led by the prosecutor Giovanni Bombardieri delegated the Gico of the Reggio Calabria Economic and Financial Police Unit to carry out an economic-patrimonial investigation aimed at applying, against the 3 entrepreneurs, personal and patrimonial preventive measures. The investigations, carried out also by taking up the results of “Andrea Doria” would have made it possible to detect the assets directly and indirectly in the availability of the entrepreneurs, the value of which would have been disproportionate to the income capacity manifested.
The seizure involved the entire business complex of 20 companies – 3 of which based in Germany – mainly active in the sectors of road freight transport, the trading of petroleum products and the treatment and
disposal of non-hazardous waste, also including 50 land and 10 buildings, 86 vehicles and motor vehicles, including luxury ones, over one million euros in cash, as well as additional financial resources.