Many used the money obtained for personal purposes, such as the purchase of cars and expensive cell phones, wire transfers of the money obtained to their family members who then used to buy clothes and household products. Investigations of the Guardia di Finanza
TREVISO. The Treviso Finance Police denounced 51 entrepreneurs for having received without having the right to, or used for unauthorized purposes, over 1.5 million euros of state aid, in the form of guaranteed loans or non-repayable contributions to deal with the emergency Covid.
Another 15 entrepreneurs, responsible for minor irregularities or who have received sums of less than 4,000 euros, have been reported and will receive an administrative sanction.
In the cases discovered by the financiers, many companies had no right to obtain the benefits but, through false self-certifications or omission of information on the real economic conditions, they managed to get the loans disbursed. Others, despite having the right to do so, have used the liquidity obtained for purposes completely unrelated to business needs.
Among the numerous violations ascertained, the most frequent case is that found in 28 companies which, at the time of submitting the loan application, declared that they had no previous losses, not dependent on the Covid-19 emergency, while, in reality, they they were already in a state of difficulty, thus obtaining loans for 780,000 euros, which the State, in its capacity as guarantor, will be forced to repay in the not remote hypothesis in which companies are unable to do so.
Confirming this risk is the fact that one of these companies was put into voluntary liquidation as soon as it received the loan. Three “paper” companies, included in a mechanism for issuing false invoices, obtained guaranteed loans for 129,000 euros and requested a further disbursement of 400,000 euros; an entrepreneur has submitted false data on his business which in fact has never been carried out; another presented the application with a non-existent VAT number, still managing to obtain 11,500 euros.
Another has “resurrected” a company inactive for 5 years, obtaining a relief of 4,000 euros. Some entrepreneurs, to show the decline in turnover in the first months of 2020, compared to the same period in 2019, have canceled all invoices issued to the beginning of 2020, postponing them to the following months.
Many then used the sums obtained for personal purposes, such as buying cars and expensive cell phones, investing in highly speculative stocks; transfers of the money obtained to their family members who then used to buy clothes and household products.
An entrepreneur, he used the funding guaranteed by the state for 25,000 euros, spending it all on online games. Finally, a Chinese citizen paid the contribution into current accounts in banks in his country of origin