Italian financial police discovered a huge tax and customs duty evasion scandal with natural gas. Allegedly, Slovenia and Croatia are also implicated. The case was turned over to the prosecution in Milan, which now has to investigate whether payment of some EUR 20bn in taxes and duties was evaded.
The investigation started in 2006 and reached Slovenia and Croatia. By registering less gas coming in Italy, companies evaded payment of different taxes worth EUR 182m for roughly 1bn cubic meters of gas. Allegedly, this gas did not even arrive to Italy, but was unloaded to Slovenian Geoplin.
Two Italian gas platforms – Garibaldi K and Barbara T2 – were not supposed to exploit gas, but allegedly gas is coming from them anyway. They are in fact connected via pipelines to their twin platforms at the Croatian side of the Adriatic – Ivana and Marika – from which 11bn cubic meters of gas arrived to Italy. Allegedly, Italian companies registered this “Croatian” gas as “Italian”, to EUR 1.142bn in taxes was not paid.
