A Malta-registered gaming firm evaded more than €120 million in taxes and ran illegal betting shops in Italy with the help of organised crime, an Italian news outlet has claimed.

The unnamed firm used a Malta address to dodge Italian authorities and had “hundreds” of workers in the country collecting online bets and placing them on virtual tables, la Repubblica claimed.

Its Malta-based company, however, allegedly also served as a front for shadow operations in Italy.

In total, those generated around €4 billion in revenues and a further €1 billion as a tax base between 2015 and 2016, police in Reggio Calabria told the news outlet. 

Had the income been properly declared, its total tax bill would reportedly have amounted to €124 million.

The company was unearthed during a widescale investigation into links between organised crime syndicate ‘ndragheta and online betting, dubbed Inchiesta Galassia. The inquiry found how criminals were laundering millions of euros through online gaming companies.

Sources told Times of Malta that the tax investigation is linked to the April arrest in Malta of an Italian man linked to a €1 billion money laundering operation that operated in the gaming sector. 

The man was arrested after Italian authorities requested a European Arrest Warrant. 

It is not the first time that Malta-registered companies have been embroiled in Italian anti-mafia investigations.

In late 2017, an anti-mafia probe in Palermo indicated that Italian underworld figures had plans to move illicit money through Maltese gaming companies.

Malta’s gaming regulator had subsequently moved to suspend licences of companies named in that investigation, with an Italian investigative reporting project claiming that many Malta-based companies had threatened to leave the country unless the sector was mopped up.