By Emilio Parodi
MILAN (Reuters) -Tax police have seized 33 million euros ($36 million) from the Italian unit of Swiss logistics group Kuehne+Nagel International and supermarket chain Iperal Supermercati in an investigation into alleged tax fraud, prosecutors’ documents show.
Milan prosecutors accused both companies in two separate 60-page decrees, reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday, of bypassing labour and tax laws by issuing false invoices.
The companies allegedly engaged cooperatives or limited liability companies to provide labour, avoiding tax and social security payments.
The charges cover the period from 2020 to 2023 for Kuehne+Nagel SRL and from 2021 to 2024 for Iperal.
Each company had 16.5 million euros seized by police, who also searched their premises and computer systems on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Milan Guardia di Finanza police.
Kuehne+Nagel confirmed its Italian subsidiary was “currently undergoing inspections by local authorities”, adding it was “fully cooperating with the local authorities”.
Iperal Supermercati said it has “always operated in compliance with the relevant regulations on procurement”.
“We will read the documents and evaluate what to do in respect of the legality and transparency that has always characterised our work”.
THOUSANDS OF JOBS REGULARISED IN CRACKDOWN
Italian authorities have scrutinised over a dozen delivery and logistics groups over their labour practices in recent years, issuing seizure orders totalling more than 650 million euros since 2021, including the latest confiscations.
Based on data from the National Social Security Institute, over 30 companies implicated in their investigations have been compelled to regularise the employment of more than 49,000 workers in the last four years, Milan prosecutors said in their decrees.
The latest decrees allege that Kuehne+Nagel and Iperal, via intermediaries, used “bogus procurement contracts for the provision of services” with these cooperatives or companies, essentially fronts for cheap labour, and filed false tax declarations.
This business model, they allege, “facilitates the exploitation of workers and results in unfair competition”, and has been a recurring issue in Italy for years, if not decades.
($1 = 0.9261 euros)
(Reporting by Emilio Parodi. Editing by Keith Weir, Mark Potter and Barbara Lewis)
