Luxury fashion retailer Gucci has confirmed that its offices in Milan and Florence were raided last week over suspected tax evasion.
The brand issued a statement after Italian newspaper La Stampa recently reported that police had spent three days searching the offices, including its Milan headquarters, for evidence.
The raid followed allegations that levies on profits made from sales in Italy were instead declared in Switzerland, which has a more relaxed tax regime.
As a result, prosecutors suspect that Gucci, which is owned by Paris-based luxury group Kering, has managed to save €1.3 billion (£1.1 billion) in Italian tax over several years.
Gucci said it was “providing its full cooperation to the respective authorities and is confident about the correctness and transparency of its operations”.
Gucci is the latest Italian fashion house to come under the spotlight for suspected tax evasion, as the country tries to recover more than €100 billion (£88.47 billion) lost to tax fraud each year.
Other luxury brands that have become targets of the government’s ongoing probe since it started in 2014 include Prada and Armani, which both had to pay multi-million euro fines while the founders of Dolce and Gabbana had their fraud convictions dropped after allegations that they avoided to pay €1 billion worth of tax.
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