Bribes to Leonardo, Google company also investigated Italian group offended party. The US company, ready to cooperate
A car of the Guardia di Finanza in an archive image © ANSA ANSA editorial staff MILAN January 12, 202121: 20NEWS A round of wads in the form of extra or monthly or annual compensation, commissions 'out of the bag' on contracts awarded and gifts such as fuel vouchers or to spend in computer, telephone, TV and appliance stores, and then objects of appreciable value such as pens brand. A system designed, according to the Prosecutor's Office, thanks also to the support of Google Pay, and which led to an investigation under the law on the liability of entities as well as two companies of the Californian giant: Google Ireland and Google Payments. This is what emerged from an investigation by the Milan prosecutor Gaetano Ruta against 14 people and 3 companies, which today brought the soldiers of the economic-financial police unit of the Guardia di Finanza to the Leonardo offices in Rome and Pomigliano d'Arco (Naples), to acquire documents. The various charges are money laundering, tax crimes and corruption between private individuals, the latter being the responsibility of ten employees of the group, who are an offended party and who collaborated in the investigations. At the center of the reconstruction of investigators and investigators is a supplier of Leonardo, Trans Part, an intermediary company in the distribution of materials and equipment for the most diverse sectors, from military to aerospace, from transport to petrochemicals. Company based in Milan and in which 4 people between managers and employees are under investigation, who, according to the investigations, in exchange for orders, obtained with the disclosure of confidential information or 'rigging' the tender notices, would have paid Leonardo employees gifts , such as petrol vouchers or for purchases in electronics stores and compensation also in the form of fictitious consulting contracts: from 1,500 euros per month to 25/30 thousand per year, from 1.5% to 3.5% 'awarded. The funding that would have been used to 'grease' the mechanism started at least in 2015, appears to come from black funds that the employees of the supplier company based in Corso Sempione would have created by 'diverting' part of the proceeds from the (lawful) orders to a US subsidiary. This, in turn, between 2012 and 2018 would have transferred, in the absence of contractual and accounting justifications, 6 million euros to three off-shore offices, one in Panama, one in the United Kingdom and one in Ireland. To then return this sum to Italy for the purpose of 'oiling' Leonardo's officials - some still in the identification phase, we read in the order of presentation of the documents - we would have used two recyclers who, is the hypothesized scheme, they would use the Google Pay payment platform. Google Ireland and Google Payments, writes the prosecutor, allegedly allowed "the transfer of sums of money resulting from tax fraud" hindering "the identification of the criminal origin". Through the "interposition" of the two companies it was not possible "to trace the identification of the person who arranged the transfers". "Of course we will lend our maximum cooperation to the investigation", says a Google spokesperson, underlining that the company has received, "as part of a wider investigation, a guarantee information for a hypothesis of administrative offense - he adds - in relation to movements financial transactions that would have been carried out using our platforms ". In particular, the Gdf has so far reconstructed that, between 2017 and 2019, there were 25 operations from abroad to Italy for a total of 400 thousand euros. Operations that would have seen the interposition of the two Mountain View companies in the channeling of funds and which are now being investigated under the law on the liability of entities in relation to alleged money laundering, as well as Trans Part in relation to tax crimes and money laundering. Sent from ProtonMail Mobile