Italian investigators searched premises and began freezing assets on 24 September in a case involving allegedly fictitious employee training. EPPO’s Naples office says a waste-management company obtained more than €6.6 million from a publicly supported training fund using invoices for courses that workers never received.
The operation was carried out by the economic and financial police unit of the Guardia di Finanza in Salerno. It followed a tax audit conducted at the company in 2025. Information uncovered during that audit developed into an investigation involving EU financial interests, alongside separate Italian proceedings concerning suspected bankruptcy offences.
According to EPPO, a cooperative issued invoices for employee training that was not provided. Those invoices allegedly supported applications to Italy’s New Skills Fund, a workforce programme co-financed by the European Social Fund Plus. The prosecution also suspects that an additional €500,000 in tax credits connected with training was claimed unlawfully.
The public money was intended to support workforce training and skills development. In the alleged arrangement, the documentary record presented that activity as having taken place even though investigators say the courses were fictitious. This is the central factual dispute in the announced case: whether the training underlying the applications and invoices was actually delivered.
EPPO requested an urgent order to freeze €6 million. The financial police were executing that measure when the case was announced. A freezing order restricts access to assets while proceedings continue. It does not itself establish guilt, and the amount covered by the order should not be treated as proof that €6 million has already been returned to public accounts.
The figures in the announcement describe different parts of the investigation. More than €6.6 million concerns money allegedly obtained from the training fund. The €500,000 relates to tax credits claimed in connection with training. The €6 million is the value of the urgent freezing order. Reporting them as interchangeable totals would conceal the difference between an alleged benefit and a measure taken to secure assets.
Prosecutors say the proceeds were subsequently used to finance business activity, including payments to employees and suppliers. That allegation concerns how the money moved after it was obtained. It does not mean that every employee paid by the company or every supplier receiving an invoice payment knowingly took part in fraud. The announcement identifies the suspected funding mechanism without making that broader accusation.
A real business expense does not, by itself, establish the legitimacy of the funding used to pay it. The training applications and the later use of the money are separate questions. If the original applications relied on services that were never supplied, investigators would still need to establish that alleged misrepresentation even if some of the resulting money went towards ordinary operating costs.
Conversely, a training invoice alone cannot show whether a course took place. A proper assessment would have to connect the claimed service with the people, dates and activity it describes. EPPO’s statement does not publish attendance records, course schedules or witness accounts. Those are therefore matters for the investigation rather than facts available for independent assessment from the press release.
The parallel proceedings are being handled by the public prosecutor’s office at the Court of Nocera Inferiore. That office is examining suspected bankruptcy-related offences concerning the same suspects. EPPO and the Italian prosecutors coordinated their search and freezing measures. The existence of two proceedings reflects different alleged conduct and does not establish that either inquiry has already resulted in a judgment.
The case was announced six days after a separate EPPO statement from Milan concerning allegedly fictitious training tax credits linked to Italy’s recovery plan. The two reports concern different investigations, different funding arrangements and different enforcement measures. Neither announcement establishes a connection between the suspects. Their common reference to training should not lead the amounts or procedural developments in the two cases to be combined.
The Salerno operation remains an investigation into alleged fraud affecting public training support. The announcement does not identify the company or cooperative, provide a full list of defendants or state that a trial has begun. It also gives no final recovery figure. The evidence will have to establish what training was promised, what was delivered and who was responsible for the funding claims. All those concerned are presumed innocent unless their guilt is established before the competent Italian courts.
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