A former head of a consortium in Italy's Tuscany region has been sentenced to three years in jail for having evaded millions of euros in taxes while managing several migrant reception centers in the region.
Stefano Mugnaini, former head of the Multicons consortium of Montelupo Fiorentino in Italy, was sentenced to three years in jail for tax evasion and the issuing of fraudulent invoices. The sentence was handed down on July 1.
The Multicons consortium ran several migrant reception centers in Italy's central region of Tuscany, which filed for bankruptcy in 2021.
Mugnaini was acquitted of charges of issuing fraudulent invoices for inexistent transactions for three local cooperatives.
Judge Maurizio Caivano also handed down sentences of one year and four months in jail to other defendants who were said to have been put at the head of some of the cooperatives.
Assets were ordered seized from all of them, for some €6,9 million, the equivalent of the taxes evaded by the Multicons cooperative, the Tosco Side company, and three other cooperatives (the Az Total, Azzurra Empolese, and Valdelsa Logistica).
Millions of euros evaded
The entrepreneur Mugnaini, from Capraia e Limite near Florence, was arrested in July 2019 on charges of having evaded €3 million in taxes between 2012 and 2017 through the issuing of fraudulent invoices totalling about €17 million.
The inquiry began after checks into the use by the consortium of state funds for migrant reception and found that the entrepreneur had obtained contracts for porterage, cleaning, and transportation at competitive prices.
In reality, according to the charges, he had managed to get advantageous deals because he did not pay VAT and social security contributions for the employees of some of the cooperatives of the group and could offer lower-than-market prices.
In November 2020, Mugnaini had also been sentenced by the Florence court to 7 years in prison for assaulting two migrants hosted in an asylum center he managed in Castelfiorentino near Florence. That assault happened on February 12, 2016.
Mugnaini had been sentenced for theft with violence, personal injury, and slander. Two workers at the center were also sentenced to five years for acting as accomplices in the theft with violence and personal injuries crimes that Mugnaini was found guilty of.