(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 14 - The State attorney's offices in Palermo and Milan and the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) have discovered a criminal organization connected to the Mafia and Camorra crime syndicates that allegedly evaded hundreds of millions of value added tax (VAT), investigative sources said on Thursday.
    A preliminary investigations judge in Milan (GIP), at the request of EPPO, issued 34 arrest warrants in prison, nine house arrest orders and four measures of interdiction from performing professional activities.
    A total of seven European arrest warrants were issued as part of the investigation.
    Assets worth 520 million euros were seized.
    False invoices were issued by the organization's members for 1.3 billion euros, said investigative sources, with prosecutors probing a total of 400 companies and 200 people on charges of money laundering and criminal association aimed at tax fraud, aggravated by the mafia-style method.
    At the centre of the probe is inter-border VAT fraud in the sale of IT equipment and the laundering of illicit profits, the sources ecplained.
    Police carried out on Thursday 160 search operations in 30 provinces.
    Overall, police operations were carried out as part of the European Public Prosecutor's Office's probe in Italy, Spain, Luxembourg, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Netherlands and in non-EU countries including Switzerland and the United Arab Emirates.
    The Milan GIP ordered the preventive seizure of over 520 million euros, or the overall value of the alleged VAT tax fraud, as well as the seizure over alleged money laundering of several properties including resorts worth a total of over 10 million euros in Cefalù, near Palermo.
    Real estate properties were also preventively seized in cities across Italy including Milan. The judge recognized, for the alleged ringleaders of the organization, the aggravating factor of having aided Mafia and Camorra crime syndicates by investing their profits in VAT frauds and of having used Mafia-style methods in conflicts within the association between members of different criminal organizations, investigative sources explained.
    According to investigators, the ringleaders of the operation included Rodolphe Ballaera, a native of Belgium of Sicilian origin, the Milanese Paolo Falavigna, Antonio Lo Manto, an alleged member of the Brancaccio Mafia clan, Giovanni Nuvoletta, an alleged member of the Camorra clan by the same name, as well as Cosimo Marullo and Marco Mezzatesta.
    The suspects allegedly "helped mafia-style clans financially, including the Camorra clan Di Lauro" from Scampia, Naples, and "the Camorra clan Nuvoletta" from Marano Di Napoli, close to the southern port city, "reinvesting the illicit profits from the VAT fraud and subsequently paying them back to support the criminal organizations", according to court papers.
    The operation's contacts within Cosa Nostra were allegedly Antonio Lo Manto and Pietro Conoscenti, while Salvatore Tamburrino, Vincenzo Perrillo and Espedito Colonna were allegedly those with the Neapolitan Camorra.
    Investigative sources said they guaranteed "reciprocal correctness" in the management of business and tried to "solve conflicts and controversies" that could arise between associates as well as with other national and international partners in the fraud.
    Mezzatesta allegedly had a significant role though his Fiumicino-based organization, Connex Italy Srl, which maintained relationships with other criminal groups offering brokering services, according to the sources. (ANSA).