Exclusive: Italy seeks $1.3 bln from fintech group ION in tax evasion probe, sources say
ROME, April 9 (Reuters) - Italy is seeking 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) from fintech group ION following a probe by prosecutors in the northern city of Bologna into alleged tax evasion over the 2013-2023 period, two people with knowledge of the matter said.
The investigation adds to a string of tax evasion cases in Italy targeting U.S. tech companies, which are also at the centre of a wider EU response to the trade war sparked by U.S. President Donald Trump's administration.
ION Group is a privately held provider of financial services software and data based in Dublin and with offices across the globe which was founded by Andrea Pignataro, an Italian businessman hailing from Bologna.
ION has spent around 6 billion euros on a series of acquisitions in Italy in recent years as Pignataro works to build a hub to provide data and digital services to smaller banks.
The sum Italy's tax authorities are demanding from ION includes up to 500 million euros in missing revenues, which more than doubles when interest payments are added, one of the sources said.
ION's lawyers are in discussions with the Italian tax authority to contest the claims, the person added.
The charge is failure to file a tax return, the second source said, with prosecutors and Italy's tax police in Bologna alleging that the company declared income abroad that was actually produced in Italy.
Reuters reported last month that Italy had handed tax demands to Meta (META.O), opens new tab, X and LinkedIn in an unprecedented VAT claim against the U.S. tech giants that could have repercussions across the EU.
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Reuters
35 minutes ago
- Reuters
Europeans seek 'digital sovereignty' as US tech firms embrace Trump
BERLIN, June 21 (Reuters) - At a market stall in Berlin run by charity Topio, volunteers help people who want to purge their phones of the influence of U.S. tech firms. Since Donald Trump's inauguration, the queue for their services has grown. Interest in European-based digital services has jumped in recent months, data from digital market intelligence company Similarweb shows. More people are looking for e-mail, messaging and even search providers outside the United States. The first months of Trump's second presidency have shaken some Europeans' confidence in their long-time ally, after he signalled his country would step back from its role in Europe's security and then launched a trade war. "It's about the concentration of power in U.S. firms," said Topio's founder Michael Wirths, as his colleague installed on a customer's phone a version of the Android operating system without hooks into the Google ecosystem. Wirths said the type of people coming to the stall had changed: "Before, it was people who knew a lot about data privacy. Now it's people who are politically aware and feel exposed." Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab chief Elon Musk, who also owns social media company X, was a leading adviser to the U.S. president before the two fell out, while the bosses of Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Meta (META.O), opens new tab and Google-owner Alphabet (GOOGL.O), opens new tab took prominent spots at Trump's inauguration in January. Days before Trump took office, outgoing president Joe Biden had warned of an oligarchic "tech industrial complex" threatening democracy. Berlin-based search engine Ecosia says it has benefited from some customers' desire to avoid U.S. counterparts like Microsoft's (MSFT.O), opens new tab Bing or Google, which dominates web searches and is also the world's biggest email provider. "The worse it gets, the better it is for us," founder Christian Kroll said of Ecosia, whose sales pitch is that it spends its profits on environmental projects. Similarweb data shows the number of queries directed to Ecosia, opens new tab from the European Union has risen 27% year-on-year and the company says it has 1% of the German search engine market. But its 122 million visits from the 27 EU countries in February were dwarfed by 10.3 billion visits to Google, whose parent Alphabet made revenues of about $100 billion from Europe, the Middle East and Africa in 2024 - nearly a third of its $350 billion global turnover. Non-profit Ecosia earned 3.2 million euros ($3.65 million) in April, of which 770,000 euros was spent on planting 1.1 million trees. Google declined to comment for this story. Reuters could not determine whether major U.S. tech companies have lost any market share to local rivals in Europe. The search for alternative providers accompanies a debate in Europe about "digital sovereignty" - the idea that reliance on companies from an increasingly isolationist United States is a threat to Europe's economy and security. "Ordinary people, the kind of people who would never have thought it was important they were using an American service are saying, 'hang on!'," said UK-based internet regulation expert Maria Farrell. "My hairdresser was asking me what she should switch to." Use in Europe of Swiss-based ProtonMail rose 11.7% year-on-year to March compared to a year ago, according to Similarweb, while use of Alphabet's Gmail, which has some 70% of the global email market, slipped 1.9%. ProtonMail, which offers both free and paid-for services, said it had seen an increase in users from Europe since Trump's re-election, though it declined to give a number. "My household is definitely disengaging," said British software engineer Ken Tindell, citing weak U.S. data privacy protections as one factor. Trump's vice president JD Vance shocked European leaders in February by accusing them - at a conference usually known for displays of transatlantic unity - of censoring free speech and failing to control immigration. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio threatened visa bans for people who "censor" speech by Americans, including on social media, and suggested the policy could target foreign officials regulating U.S. tech companies. U.S. social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said the European Union's Digital Services Act amounts to censorship of their platforms. EU officials say the Act will make the online environment safer by compelling tech giants to tackle illegal content, including hate speech and child sexual abuse material. Greg Nojeim, director of the Security and Surveillance Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, said Europeans' concerns about the U.S. government accessing their data, whether stored on devices or in the cloud, were justified. Not only does U.S. law permit the government to search devices of anyone entering the country, it can compel disclosure of data that Europeans outside the U.S. store or transmit through U.S. communications service providers, Nojeim said. Germany's new government is itself making efforts to reduce exposure to U.S. tech, committing in its coalition agreement to make more use of open-source data formats and locally-based cloud infrastructure. Regional governments have gone further - in conservative-run Schleswig-Holstein, on the Danish border, all IT used by the public administration must run on open-source software. Berlin has also paid for Ukraine to access a satellite-internet network operated by France's Eutelsat ( opens new tab instead of Musk's Starlink. But with modern life driven by technology, "completely divorcing U.S. tech in a very fundamental way is, I would say, possibly not possible," said Bill Budington of U.S. digital rights nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Everything from push notifications to the content delivery networks powering many websites and how internet traffic is routed relies largely on U.S. companies and infrastructure, Budington noted. Both Ecosia and French-based search engine Qwant depend in part on search results provided by Google and Microsoft's Bing, while Ecosia runs on cloud platforms, some hosted by the very same tech giants it promises an escape from. Nevertheless, a group on messaging board Reddit called BuyFromEU has 211,000 members. "Just cancelled my Dropbox and will switch to Proton Drive," read one post. Mastodon, a decentralised social media service developed by German programmer Eugen Rochko, enjoyed a rush of new users two years ago when Musk bought Twitter, later renamed X. But it remains a niche service. Signal, a messaging app run by a U.S. nonprofit foundation, has also seen a surge in installations from Europe. Similarweb's data showed a 7% month-on-month increase in Signal usage in March, while use of Meta's WhatsApp was static. Meta declined to comment for this story. Signal did not respond to an e-mailed request for comment. But this kind of conscious self-organising is unlikely on its own to make a dent in Silicon Valley's European dominance, digital rights activist Robin Berjon told Reuters. "The market is too captured," he said. "Regulation is needed as well."
NBC News
38 minutes ago
- NBC News
Health care has been a job market bright spot, but Trump's budget bill looms over the industry
Proposed cuts to health insurance programs in the budget bill being pushed through Congress by President Donald Trump could put hundreds of thousands of health care jobs at risk — jeopardizing one of the few notably strong areas of the U.S. job market. Congressional Republicans are advancing a budget plan that would cause nearly 8 million people on Medicaid to lose their health insurance coverage, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, with an additional 2 million people to lose coverage through the Affordable Care Act if Congress remains on track to let health insurance tax subsidies expire at the end of the year. Less funding for Medicaid and fewer people with health insurance would mean a drop-off in doctor's office visits, prescription refills and medical procedures — and, as a result, fewer workers needed to support those types of services. It could lead to the loss of nearly 500,000 health care jobs over the next decade, according to an analysis by George Washington University and the Commonwealth Fund. The expiration of the ACA tax subsidies, which were enacted in 2021, would result in the loss of an additional 140,000 jobs, a separate analysis from George Washington University found. 'Hospitals will close, health centers will close, pharmacies in some parts of the country will close because they will lose revenue,' said Leighton Ku, director for the Center for Health Policy Research at George Washington University, who worked on the analyses. 'There are going to be job losses, and we're talking about middle class jobs being lost.' That would be a blow to one of the strongest, steadiest areas of the job market in recent years. Health care accounted for nearly half of the jobs added in the U.S. in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Last year, around half of the 2.2 million jobs added to the economy were in health care-related sectors, according to an analysis by S&P Global. That has helped offset job cuts and stagnant growth in other sectors of the labor market, like retail and manufacturing. 'Right now, a lot of what is driving these positive headline numbers and bolstering the labor market is the health care sector,' said Allison Shrivastava, an economist with job listing site 'It's something that has been a constant. The health care sector has been a pretty big mainstay as the rest of the labor market has cooled.' The health insurance provisions are part of a broader spending bill that has passed the House and is currently making its way through the Senate. The legislation, which Republicans have dubbed the " Big Beautiful Bill Act," would cut around $800 billion from Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor and disabled, in order to help offset some of the $4 trillion in tax cut extensions in the bill for individuals and corporations. A version of the bill currently in the Senate, which plans to start voting on the legislation next week, would go even further in reducing spending on Medicaid, by including a provision to limit states' use of taxes on hospitals and other health care providers that help states fund their share of the Medicaid program. The cuts would take a particular toll on health care providers in rural areas, where patients are more likely to be insured through Medicaid than those in metro areas. Researchers at Georgetown University found that 40% of children in small and rural towns receive their health insurance from Medicaid. Already, one-third of all rural hospitals in the country are at risk of closing because of financial difficulties, according to a report this month from the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Also at risk are Community Health Centers, which employ more than 300,000 workers and receive a portion of their funding from the federal government. Those centers, which serve at least 32 million mostly lower-income patients a year, get about 40% of their revenue from Medicaid. 'Our health centers operate on razor-thin margins, so any kind of disruption in payments or reimbursements, even for a short time, can have a significant impact,' said Joe Dunn, chief policy officer for the National Association of Community Health Centers. 'About 40% of health centers are in rural America, and oftentimes they are the only primary care in that community. We have health centers in towns of a few hundred people, and there may not be any other kind of health care network there.' Absent any policy changes from Congress, the health care sector had appeared to be on track for continued growth — and largely isolated from wider concerns about tariffs and an economic slowdown. The number of job postings for doctors and surgeons on are about 90% higher than their pre-pandemic levels, listings for home health aides are up 46%, and openings for nurses are up 16%, Shrivastava said. Health care job postings on represent 27% of all active job listings and health care postings are beginning to make up a larger share of new job postings, according to data from ZipRecruiter. A loss of that hiring momentum from funding cuts would leave one less positive driver for the job market. 'Right now, the labor market as a whole is arguably in a stagnant position,' said Shrivastava. 'People are not wanting to leave their jobs, they're nervous about whether or not they'll be able to find another job, and companies aren't really looking to hire. Health care has been the exception to that.'
South Wales Argus
2 hours ago
- South Wales Argus
Mike Lynch's superyacht seen on the surface for the first time since it sank
Seven people died when the Bayesian sank off the Italian island on August 19, including billionaire Mr Lynch, 59, and his daughter Hannah, 18. The 56-metre (184ft) yacht was seen being held in an upright position by one of Europe's most powerful sea cranes near the fishing town of Porticello on Saturday morning. Hannah and Mike Lynch (Family handout) A project insider told the PA news agency: 'The vessel is on surface, but not clear of the sea as yet. 'Pumping out of water will continue, and it will be lunchtime – following a series of lifting and resting procedures – before she will finally be fully and finally out of the water.' Salvage workers could be seen on the vessel, which is covered in mud and algae, while the canopy and guard rails are mangled. Investigators in the UK and Italy say raising the vessel is crucial to fully understanding what happened. The yacht's 72-metre (236ft) mast was cut off on Tuesday using a remote-controlled tool and rested on the seabed to be picked up later. Tech tycoon Mike Lynch's superyacht the Bayesian is lifted to the surface (Peter Byrne/PA) Over the last few days, salvage teams have worked to ease the hull into an upright position and give access to the yacht's right side, which had previously been lying flat on the seabed 50 metres below the surface. The vessel is expected to be brought to Termini Imerese – where Italian prosecutors investigating the sinking are based, and on Monday it will be lifted on to a specially made steel cradle on the quayside. It was originally expected to be raised last month, but salvage efforts were delayed after a diver died during underwater work on May 9, prompting greater use of remote-controlled equipment. About 70 specialist personnel had been mobilised to Porticello from across Europe to work on the recovery operation, which began last month. Inquest proceedings in the UK are looking at the deaths of Mr Lynch and his daughter, as well as Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, and his wife, Judy Bloomer, 71, who were all British nationals. Marine Accident Investigation Branch investigators said in an interim report that the Bayesian was knocked over by 'extreme wind'. The yacht had a vulnerability to winds, but the owner and crew would not have known, the report said. The Bayesian is lifted to the surface (Peter Byrne/PA) US lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo, and Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the vessel, also died in the sinking. Fifteen people, including Mr Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, were rescued. Mr Lynch and his daughter were said to have lived in the vicinity of London and the Bloomers lived in Sevenoaks in Kent. The tycoon founded software giant Autonomy in 1996 and was cleared in June last year of carrying out a massive fraud over the sale of the firm to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011. The boat trip was a celebration of his acquittal in the case in the US.
