Lombardy and the gray zone

Corruption, illegality, mafias, economics and finance. Rosy Battaglia's commentary every Tuesday

The flow of press releases from the Guardia di Finanza seems like a war bulletin. Tax fraud, fraud both against credit institutions and on public financing and contributions for Covid, fraudulent bankruptcy and self-laundering. Only the latest operation which saw the Fiamme Gialle seize assets and valuables for approximately 40 million euros and 21 personal precautionary measures (including people arrested and under house arrest), by order of the G.I.P of the Court of Monza, makes us reflect on an economic fabric in the north, which is highly "polluted".

The investigation led financial investigators on the trail of 58 individuals held responsible for the issuing and use of false invoices for a total amount of over 100 million euros. The investigations arose from a tax audit of a professional, a tax consultant who had made his office in Cologno Monzese available as a registered office, in the province of Milan, even to ghost companies.

An example, unfortunately more and more frequent, of the "grey zone", which consistently emerges from the judicial chronicles in the record region for anti-mafia interdictions. A suffocating grey. Assolombarda, the association of companies operating in the metropolitan city of Milan and in the provinces of Lodi, Monza and Brianza, Pavia, organized a webinar last week on the infiltration of organized crime in the time of Covid. From the words of the vice-president, with the delegation to legality, Antonio Calabrò, the confirmation of an increasingly present and available mafia, capable of solving every management and economic problem of companies in difficulty. Also for this reason, Assolombarda reiterated the existence of its own help desk for its members, over 6,800 companies, and asked for interventions from the institutions.

But the Covid crisis has only brought to the surface a presence that was already there. As Giorgio De Rita of Censis reiterated, Lombardy is in first place when it comes to the "unobserved economy", which absorbs around 17% of those 211 billion evaded. The equivalent of the GDP of the province of Brescia. Data that we anticipated in this column just a few weeks ago. But they still make an impression. In the richest region of Italy, the weight of the mafias and organized crime, thanks to the compliant gray zone, is increasingly stronger.