The tax police investigation conducted by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Cagliari, under the direction of the Regional Prosecutor of the Court of Accounts with the Jurisdictional Section for Sardinia.

The investigations, which began in the midst of the Covid period, at the time of the large-scale vaccination campaign, focused on the analysis of the documentation relating to the purchase of rapid antigenic swabs for the search for the qualitative antigen of the Sars-Cov2 virus. The mass testing promoted by the Sardinia Region was aimed at monitoring the population during the second wave of the pandemic so as to promptly identify and trace the so-called "patient zero", and limit the infections and the spread of the virus as much as possible, especially among people fragile and at high risk of mortality, in order to decongest the island's health system.

In this context , it was ascertained that a regional health authority had purchased a total of 2,201,200 rapid swabs; of these, 1,306,000 of the optical readable chromatograph type from a company based in northern Italy, which had offered the required supplies in the shortest period of time, although it had finished fifth in a tender supra-regional urgency called by the Procurement Company of the Piedmont Region and to which the Sardinia Region had adhered.

This assignment , it later emerged, had taken place even before the officialization of the health initiative and without a prior study and planning of the supplies necessary for the execution of the mass testing. A circumstance that would have led to a greater outlay of financial resources given that the unit cost incurred by the regional health authority for the purchase of 1,306,000 tampons was equal to 2.45 euros against the 1.29 euros offered by the first classified.

Not only that: once the entire campaign was closed, the quantity purchased was oversized compared to the real needs , given that only 338,155 medical devices have been used overall and that, to date, 753,000 tampons are in stock and no longer dispensable as they have expired.

Two managers of the Regional Health Authority were therefore reported to the Cagliari Accounting Prosecutor's Office for having caused tax damages amounting to 3,524,260 euros.

(Unioneonline/ss)

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