The Rome financial police seized a value of 20 million euros from Edenred Italia, a company operating in the field of services to public and private companies, specializing in meal vouchers and restaurant vouchers. The Rome public prosecutor's office announced in a note that this provision had been adopted following administrative offenses linked to “crimes of fraud against the State and infringement of freedom of auction perpetrated”, committed by four employees of the company that has succeeded one another over time. The facts, for which Edenred management was the subject of an investigation, date back to the period between 2021 and 2023. The investigations were carried out by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Rome Financial Police and highlighted alleged fraudulent behavior in participation in a call for tenders for the award of the meal voucher service for the Public Administration, worth 1,250,000,000 euros.
Complaint from competing company
They thus allegedly facilitated the illicit transfer of four lots with a total value of around 580 million euros to the company in question. According to what was raised by the prosecution, the company issuing the meal vouchers would have falsely declared the equivalence between the reduction offered to the Public Administration and that applied to affiliated companies, in violation of the rules established by the law on calls for tenders. Then, thanks to parallel agreements, it would have paid part of the expected commission to affiliated companies, applying a greater reduction than that applied to the Public Administration. In fact, according to the prosecution, this is a blatant violation of the rules of advertising. The investigation was opened by a complaint from a competing company which had requested to carry out a series of investigations into the tender.
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