(ANSA) - ROME, NOV 14 - The State attorney's offices in Palermo and Milan and the European Public Prosecutor's Office (EPPO) have discovered a criminal organization connected to the Mafia and Camorra crime syndicates that allegedly evaded hundreds of millions of value added tax (VAT), investigative sources said on Thursday.
    A preliminary investigations judge in Milan (GIP), at the request of EPPO, issued 34 arrest warrants in prison, nine house arrest orders and four measures of interdiction from performing professional activities.
    A total of seven European arrest warrants were issued as part of the investigation.
    Assets worth 520 million euros were seized.
    False invoices were issued for 1.3 billion euros, said investigative sources, with prosecutors probing a total of 400 companies and 200 people on charges of money laundering and criminal association aimed at tax fraud, aggravated by the mafia-style method.
    At the centre of the probe is inter-border VAT fraud in the sale of IT equipment and the laundering of illicit profits, the sources ecplained.
    Police carried out on Thursday 160 search operations in 30 provinces. (ANSA).