Mar.01, 2010
Italian businessman Silvio Scaglia has been arrested pending questioning in an investigation into a claimed EUR2 billion (US$2.7 billion) money laundering scandal that has affected Telecom Italia and Swisscom.
Scaglia, the founder of Swisscom owned Italian telco, Fastweb returned to Italy last week and was taken immediately to prison. He is one of 56 named suspects as part of a probe of a money-laundering ring that allegedly used dummy companies to carry out fake transactions between 2003 and 2007. The suspects are also accused of tax evasion.
At the time it acquired Fastweb in 2007, Swisscom says that was aware of the investigation into tax evasion that allegedly took place in the period of 2003 to 2006. Swisscom is currently conducting an in-depth review into the implications of the latest occurences.
Between the years 2003 and 2006, Fastweb bought and sold services (phone cards and voice services) from Italian providers, whereby Italian VAT was included in the purchase prices. In January 2007 an existing legal investigation was made public by Fastweb. According to the authorities' allegations, the vendors only entered into the transactions to avoid that transferred VAT, paid by Fastweb, is delivered to the tax authorities.
Telecom Italia subsidiary, Sparkle is also named as part of the investigation, forcing Telecom Italia to delay its financial results.