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One in three public contracts in Italy found in breach of regulations: report

Xinhua, April 8, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Italian financial police have uncovered over 17,000 tax crimes, with a finding that at least one third of all public contracts monitored during 2014 have breached Italian regulations, a report said on Wednesday.

The data were released by the 'Guardia di Finanza', Italy's special military police unit assigned to countering fiscal, economic and financial crimes, and reporting directly to the economy and finance ministry.

In countering tax evasion and other tax crimes, the financial police carried out over 94,000 investigations throughout last year, the report said.

Some 41.4 million Italians out of a population of almost 60 millions are taxpayers, according to statistics of the finance ministry.

Some 17,800 cases of tax evasion and fraud were uncovered overall, with a 1.19 billion euros worth in assets seized.

More than 13,000 people were denounced for alleged fiscal crimes in 2014, and 146 of them were arrested. These cases included 7,863 total tax dodgers, namely people falsely declaring no earnings at all to authorities.

Monitoring the public spending of national and European funds across the country, the financial police also put 210 public contracts worth 4.6 billion euros under scrutiny in 2014.

One out of three contracts were found to have breached the Italian regulations, with an unduly allocation of 1.79 billion euros, the report said.

The financial police also uncovered 666 million euros and 618 million euros of unduly collected contributions from the European Union (EU) and the Italian state, respectively. In both cases, it counted for more than half of the public contributions put under scrutiny.

Some 121 million euros in assets were seized for alleged crimes against the public administration.

The Guardia di Finanza is also involved in countering economic and financial activities of the organized crime in Italy, including money laundering.

Thousands of people and companies were put under investigation for alleged mafia related activities during 2014, and 4 billion euros in assets were seized to people allegedly belonging to organized crime groups. (1 euro = 1.09 U.S. dollars) Endit