The Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza in Lodi, as part of the Green River investigation coordinated by the Public Prosecutor's Office, arrested eight people and charged 44 others with criminal conspiracy to commit self-laundering and the issuance and use of invoices for persistent transactions, seizing €31 million. They uncovered, essentially, an underground banking system run by the Chinese—a parallel, informal network for the transfer of money and assets, operating outside of legal and official financial channels and therefore unsupervised. Indeed, it was a network unknown to the State.
The investigation began in 2024 following investigations into a company based in the Lodi area that was revealed to be fictitious and that operated as a "shell company" by issuing invoices for non-existent transactions worth thousands of euros. This uncovered a criminal organization that, bypassing official and regulated financial channels and anti-money laundering measures, managed to transfer over 200 million euros to China.
In particular, the criminal organization, through the use of 41 shell companies, managed from an anonymous office based in Chiari (Bescia), would have allowed the issuance of invoices for non-existent transactions for 200 million euros, to various "client" companies, subsequently channeling the corresponding sums of money received abroad, to then pay them back in cash to the same companies, withholding a "commission" for the service rendered equal to 10%.
Some companies have even improperly exploited the favorable regulations provided for the disastrous events of the 2009 Abruzzo earthquake and those related to the Covid pandemic, to include completely nonexistent credits in their accounts to offset their various debts: tax, social security, and insurance.
(Unioneonline)