Ortensia FEDELI 

Lieutenant Colonel Ortensia Fedeli began her tenure with the Guardia di Finanza in 2001. She holds a summa cum laude degree in Economics and Financial Security Sciences, as well as in Economics and Management. Over the course of her career, she has gained extensive experience in the field of tax audits and related international tax investigations. Prior to attending the 52nd Senior Course of Economic and Financial Police, she was employed at the GDF Special Revenue Unit as Head of the Excise Group, where she was responsible for developing risk analysis to detect and address excise and VAT fraud.

Designer fuel fraud: the most common type of fraud in the wholesale market for petroleum products

Fuel fraud is the practice of diluting, adulterating or smuggling fuel in order to exploit price arbitrage conditions in a market. A variety of fuel frauds can be used by unscrupulous parties to exploit price arbitrage when taxes and/or subsidies create large price differentials between fuel products. The schemes typically fall into two categories: evading taxes and abusing subsidies. Tax evasion involves diluting higher-taxed fuels with lower-taxed fuels. The resulting mixture is then sold as genuine high quality fuel. This can result in a double theft of government revenue when carried out in countries that have both a subsidized and a taxed fuel. The government loses the taxes on the higher-priced fuel and pays for the volume of subsidized fuel used for dilution. In addition, cheaper subsidized fuel can be transported across national borders to countries without subsidy schemes.

Fuel fraud is a growing phenomenon. This type of fraud usually involves base oil fraud, also known as designer fuel fraud. Designer fuel is a mixed product, some of which is free of excise duty in the EU. Criminal organizations, often transnational, produce a mixture of gas oil and other additives to alter the final physical characteristics of the product so that it does not attract excise duty on the market and can be sold on the black market.

The Guardia di Finanza (GDF) investigates all types of fiscal and financial crimes and the fight against tax evasion of a criminal nature is one of the Corps’ operational priorities, given the specific judicial police prerogatives granted to the Corps by law. The above-mentioned crimes are considered to be the most important in terms of revenue because of the amount of tax evaded and because they are mainly carried out by criminal organizations through transnational fraudulent schemes and false documentation. It is in this scenario that the value of the GDF's investigations is most evident, as many successful investigations have been carried out to uncover criminal organizations involved in this type of fraud, which threatens the economic and financial interests of both the nation and the European Union.