Rome, July 25 (SocialNews.XYZ) Italian financial police announced that they have seized 121 million euros ($131.1 million) from the Italian operations of retail giant Amazon for alleged tax evasion and worker exploitation.
A spokesman for the Italian financial authorities told Xinhua on Wednesday that the seizure, the largest-ever of its kind in Italy, was connected to the methods the retailer used to pay outsourced labor, which both reduced the company's tax payments and allowed it to pay workers below the going rates.
"The company illegally employed mechanisms for non-existent operations that allowed fraudulent tax bills and worker exploitation," the official said.
For its part, Amazon sent a statement to reporters saying, "We comply with all applicable laws and regulations in every country where we operate and we demand that companies that work with us do the same." It did not elaborate further, Xinhua news agency reported.
Amazon has had several legal and financial problems in Italy in recent years. Among them are 10 million euros in fines from the country's antitrust regulator for limiting consumer choice on its website in April (1 euro = $1.08).
Source: IANS
About Gopi
Gopi Adusumilli is a Programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
He enjoys designing websites, developing mobile applications and publishing news articles on current events from various authenticated news sources.
When it comes to writing he likes to write about current world politics and Indian Movies. His future plans include developing SocialNews.XYZ into a News website that has no bias or judgment towards any.
He can be reached at gopi@socialnews.xyz