The inclusion, in the list accompanying a charge, of invoices whose falsity has not been alleged or established does not automatically invalidate an indictment for tax offences. In judgment no. 20913/2025, the third criminal section of the Italian Court of Cassation declared a defendant's appeal inadmissible: the alleged conduct was identifiable and the defence had been able to address it. The judgment concerns the clarity of the charge and its correspondence with the facts adjudicated; it does not remove the need to establish the elements of the offence.
Invoices must be identifiable, even without an itemised list
The proceedings concerned the use and issue of invoices for objectively non-existent transactions, charged under Articles 2 and 8 of Legislative Decree no. 74/2000. The defence complained that the indictment did not allow documents considered false to be distinguished precisely from invoices corresponding to genuine commercial activities. It also challenged the absence of detailed information needed to identify individual transactions.
The Court applied a practical test: the indictment must describe the essential elements of the facts so as to allow a full adversarial examination and the exercise of defence rights. Absolute detail is not always necessary. For the use of invoices, the documents may also be identifiable through reference to a homogeneous category; for their issue, the beneficiaries may be established through factual elements allowing their identification.
In this case, the defendant's role, the issuing and recipient companies and the relevant tax years defined the allegations. Those particulars, together with the documents in the case file, had enabled the defendant to understand the charges and defend them on their merits. The judgment therefore does not authorise incomprehensible charges: the actual ability to identify the alleged facts remains the point to examine.
A charge broader than the facts proved is not the same as different facts
The defence also argued that the list included invoices relating to lawful activities. The Court of Cassation distinguished that possibility from a breach of the requirement that the judgment correspond to the charge (principio di correlazione tra accusa e sentenza). Such a breach occurs when the facts held to constitute the offence differ from those charged, rather than simply because the charge includes conduct subsequently found to have no criminal relevance.
If some invoices are not shown to be false, that may affect the findings concerning the conduct and its extent. It does not, by itself, mean that the entire indictment is invalid. The defendant can organise a defence in relation to all invoices listed as relating to non-existent transactions; excluding some of them does not necessarily introduce a new allegation.
Two questions must therefore be kept separate: which transactions were charged in an understandable way, and which of those transactions were actually proved? The judgment addresses the first procedural question without making the second unnecessary. Reading it as dispensing with proof that documents were false would distort its meaning.
Additional details of the charge must be assessed alongside defence opportunities
During the proceedings, the public prosecutor had supplemented the documentation following a request from the preliminary hearing judge. The defence obtained an adjournment to examine the documents filed. The Court of Cassation attached weight to this practical opportunity and to the fact that no new facts had been charged compared with the original indictment, rejecting the alleged prejudice to the defence.
This is not a rule making every failure to communicate irrelevant. The assessment in the judgment depends on the documents made known, the time allowed to examine them and the identity of the facts charged. Anyone assessing an objection that a charge is insufficiently specific must therefore compare the indictment, the documents referred to and any supplementary documents, identifying the actual difficulty they caused for the defence.
The Court also examined the challenges to the reasoning on criminal responsibility, finding them to be an inadmissible request to reassess the evidence. The final outcome was that the appeal was declared inadmissible, with an order to pay procedural costs and 3,000 euros to the Cassa delle ammende, the Italian fund receiving such court-ordered payments. Assistance with a criminal defence may help when assessing the documents and objections in individual proceedings.
