Guardia di Finanza seizes €25m from ex-Gratta e Vinci staff over ticket fraud

Guardia di Finanza officers from the Rome provincial command have executed a preventive seizure of assets and financial holdings worth more than €25m, the force said. The order was issued by the jurisdictional section of the Corte dei conti for Lazio to secure a claim held by the Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli as the damaged public administration. The amount matches the alleged state loss contested against five former employees of a state concessionaire for the Gratta e Vinci game; the concessionaire itself is described as wholly unconnected to the alleged conduct.

According to the reconstruction in the report, the former employees used their access credentials to the company's computer systems to manipulate its servers and identify four winning tickets: two first prizes of €7m each and two with an individual value of €5m. The tickets were then bought by relatives and friends of the alleged fraudsters at retailers across Italy where the concessionaire had sent them. The prosecution's case is that the misuse of privileged information removed the element of chance and the possibility that the prizes might never have been claimed and would have remained with the state.

The seized assets comprise 25 properties, including apartments, small houses, garages and cellars, in the provinces of Rome, Viterbo, Treviso, Taranto, Grosseto and Reggio Calabria, as well as five cars and motorcycles and financial holdings. The officers of the Rome economic and financial police unit, acting on delegation from the regional prosecutor's office, served the five former employees with a summons to appear before the accounting court. The report states that the defences presented by the former employees at the pre-trial stage did not overcome the prosecution's claims in the invitation to submit arguments notified in March.

The designated judge will decide in chambers whether to confirm, modify or revoke the asset freeze before individual liabilities are determined in the accounting proceedings. The report notes that, under the presumption of innocence, the administrative liability of those involved will be established definitively only by a conviction judgment from the accounting judge.