A digital ticket touting service, which involved buying tickets for Serie A matches and shows and reselling them online, would have allowed over €30 million to be hidden from the Italian tax authorities over a five-year period and €6.5 million to be avoided in VAT.
This is what an investigation by the Sassari financial police has uncovered. Specifically, the activity conducted by the Olbia-based group of officers began following a report of illicit "secondary ticketing," or the resale of tickets for shows and events. The Guardia di Finanza focused its attention on a man, a resident of Olbia, who was found to be the purchaser of a large number of concert, match, and event tickets intended for unauthorized resale.
The investigation was extended to include the spouse, discovering that he was engaged in the same business. The couple, according to the Guardia di Finanza, had dual Italian and Swiss residency and allegedly exploited this legal status to fail to declare the proceeds of ticket sales, which were actually conducted in Italy.
The investigations conducted by the military would have proven that the two ran their business in Gallura and that, from there, between 2019 and 2024, they purchased tens of thousands of tickets worth over a million euros.
Subsequently, attention turned to a Swiss company of which one of the spouses was found to be the director and sole shareholder. The evidence gathered revealed that the Swiss headquarters was merely a contact address and that the actual management of the company was permanently carried out from the island.
The company was therefore classified in Italy as a "total tax evader," and all income reconstructed during the tax audit was attributed to domestic taxation. The couple was reported to the Tempio Pausania Public Prosecutor's Office for failure to file a tax return.
(Unioneonline/An.De.)
