upvote
I think that normally that may be the approach (and I'm not singling out Italy for this, it probably applies to most countries).

On this occasion, however:

> In all previous cases involving other international groups, once a settlement was reached and payment made, prosecutors closed related criminal investigations, either through plea deals or by dropping the cases.

> This time, however, Milan prosecutors did not share the tax authority's approach and decided to press ahead with their probe, leading to a request that the suspects be sent to trial.

reply
Damn, is anyone an expert that can speak to the criminal law involved here?

It’s crazy that executives can jump around the law and not face any criminal charges, then the company picks up the bill (although I’m not ignorant thinking this isn’t usual)

I’m just curious to learn more about how often this is the case and you usually what happens with people afterward

reply
I don't know about Italian law, but in the US tax evasion is pretty difficult in many cases to prove. It is illegal in the US to deliberately defraud the IRS to evade paying taxes, it is not illegal to make a mistake, or claim a deduction you think you can claim when the IRS decides you can't, etc. So prosecutors must prove you had an intent to evade taxes you knew you owed. Because they can rarely meet that bar, criminal charges are rarely brought.
reply
In Italy, if you are charged of tax evasion, you need to demonstrate that you are not evading. It's called "inversion proof"
reply
that seems terrible
reply
While I share your sentiment, perhaps its better that it remain murky to give prosecutors a chance to succeed.
reply
It usually works more like:

  - we want 1.4B, but it will take 10 years in courts
  - best I can do is 800M (or even lower)
  - ok, we'll take it
source: I'm italian and many tech giants did this already. Apple opened an academy in Naples too.
reply
Not only tech giants, everybody from celebrities to random Joes can get away with it.

My mother's husband owed 70k+ EUR in taxes and at some point the judge proposed and he agreed to 2800 euros.

The trick is to not have a bank account in your name only, you have it joint with a child/spouse and they can't take your money. Nor they can take your house, if you only have one.

Eventually under those situations the judges try to take anything rather than nothing.

I'm not defending this situation, just saying it's widespread and the fact that every two governments come one that does a "condono", which is essentially "let's agree with tax evaders for some 50% of the tax they owe so they are happy and we see something" doesn't help.

Harsher punishment should be warranted, but you can't go to prison for tax evasion.

reply
> The trick is to not have a bank account in your name only, you have it joint with a child/spouse and they can't take your money.

Yes they can take 100% of your part of that bank account which amounts at total / # of owners.

reply
You 100% should be able to go to prison from tax evasion. Not to fill prisons just to line prison owners' pockets like in the US, but definitely have the possibility for egregious offences.
reply
you can… it’s just not really clear that anyone does. that said, i think if you polled the average joe on the street, they would overwhelmingly say that you can, which is probably a net gain for society.
reply
"Tariffs on Italy are threatened. Case is dropped."

Justice is independent in most EU countries.

reply
But I think tariffs cannot be imposed on individual countries in the EU. At least that was how I understood the situation with Spain.
reply
that is also true. Doesn't really stop Trump from threatening to do it all the tim tho.
reply
Nothing stops that man from saying anything, he himself the least.
reply
There's quite a few asterisks that need to be appended to "independent".
reply
It is quite independent in Italy actually. The government is pushing for a constitutional amendment to help "fix" this feature. There is going to be a referendum on the change very soon.
reply
I have ancestral Italian Citizenship but have never lived in Italy.

I am occasionally called upon by the local consulate to perform my civic duty and vote.

Just this week I sent them back my ballot, now marked, for this referendum in a sealed envelope.

This referendum required me to dig more deeply than usual into Italian politics before I could decide which way I wanted to vote.

reply
I am familiar with this but thought it was for separating prosecutors from judges?

Is this some indirect effect of that?

reply
the current reform is complicated, and reasonable people can disagree on how to vote, but it goes a bit further than separating prosecutors from judges.

Namely, it also changes the self-regulating body (the CSM, Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura) of the judiciary so that the government and parliament have a bit more authority and the judiciary have a bit less: the organ is split in two, its judiciary members are no longer elected but picked randomly while a part is decided by the political side, and there's an even higher special tribunal.

Proponents say this is necessary, opponents say this is leading towards stronger power of the political majority over the judiciary.

reply
> while a part is decided by the political side

Now, roughly one third of CSM members is nominated by the Parliament and the other one is elected by judges, according to the "correnti" (a sort of parties)

reply
> It is quite independent in Italy actually.

Ask any Romanian and they'll tell you they're not. Ask them about the Mario Iorgulescu case [1], with the Italian justice system refusing to extradite him here to Romania only because his (wealthy) dad paid the right people off. And Iorgulescu is not the only such case.

[1] https://www.romaniajournal.ro/society-people/law-crime/mario...

reply
> The government is pushing for a constitutional amendment to help "fix" this feature. There is going to be a referendum on the change very soon.

Italian here. It's not like that: the referendum is about definitely enforcing the career separation about public persecutor and judges. Actually they are under the same authority and the member of this authority are elected according to a sort of political parties (unique case in the whole EU) and this creates some distortions in career growths and nominations. The new schema will create two different authorities and the members will be selected according to a ballot.

A similar proposal was made by the left wing parties few years ago, when they were at the government

reply