Telecom Italia under investigation for fraud in connection with SIM cards registered in bogus names

Telecom Italy is under investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office for alleged fraud connected to false SIM cards. The company’s presumed involvement is based on the content of Legislative Decree no. 231 of 2001 regarding the criminal liability of corporations arising from administrative offences.

The Public Prosecutor’ s Office is carrying out investigations into criminal conspiracy, receiving and forgery. 14 of the 99 people under investigation for irregularities in the management of SIM cards are Telecom employees while all the others are authorized Tim dealers.

Between 2007 and 2009, according to the prosecutors’ reconstruction, the Telecom employees under investigation enabled millions of SIM cards registered to bogus individuals with the aim of receiving higher rates of incentive pay, as the company paid bonuses to employees in relation to the number of SIM cards enabled. The authorized Tim dealers then sold them under the counter to people in whose interest it was not to appear as SIM card holders and in many cases cards were then used to commit crimes (particularly IT crimes).

Thanks to the SIM card scam the Telecom employees gained in terms of incentive payments, the Tim dealers increased their earnings thanks to the higher price at which they sold cards already made out in someone’s name and Telecom itself also benefitted as this business increased its market share and generated further traffic. According to the investigation coordinated by the Milan Public Prosecutors Massimiliano Carducci and Francesco Cajani, it would appear that in 2008 the company made an unfair profit of some €231 million.

Telecom has issued a statement in which it describes itself as “the injured party” and announces that “it will sue all the defendants for damages in a civil proceeding,” stressing that in 2008 it had filed “two complaints as the injured party and from the very outset of the investigation had taken action to suspend the 14 employees, (none of whom were executives), who were involved at the time and who are under investigation in the current judicial proceedings.”