Finance police on Tuesday carried out the preventive seizure of around 121 millions euros from the Italian branch of Amazon in relation to probe by Milan prosecutors into alleged tax fraud and worker exploitation.
The case regards the allegedly use of so-called 'labour reservoirs', a system under which large companies illegally subcontract out logistics services to other firms and cooperatives in order to get labour at rock-bottom rates and pay less tax.
Milan prosecutors have opened more than a dozen similar investigations into companies including DHL, GLS, Uber, Lidl, BRT, Geodis, Esselunga, Securitalia, UPS, GS of the Carrefour group and GXO, the latter of which had 84 million euros seized from it on July 2.
The seizure order alleged that several of the cooperatives used by Amazon "systematically failed to pay VAT and pension and social-security contributions".
It alleged "a complex tax fraud" was being committed via an "illegal mechanism of invoices for operations that legally do not exist regarding the drawing up of sub-contracts for labour".
It added that "the fraudulent mechanism is still in place, with very significant losses for the State coffers and situations of worker exploitation that continue to the total benefit of Amazon Italia Transport srl".
In a statement, Amazon said that "we comply with all applicable laws and regulations in every country in which we operate, and we demand that companies that work with us do the same.
"We have set high standards for both ourselves and our suppliers and we have a code of conduct that suppliers must adhere to in order to work with us," it continued.
"We will continue to cooperate promptly with the authorities during the investigation..
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