fidzu : nerd

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Milan prosecutors have requested trial for Amazon's European unit and four of its managers over alleged tax evasion worth around $1.38 billion, two sources with direct knowledge of the matter said on Thursday. The move is unprecedented for a case of this kind in Italy, as Amazon agreed in December to pay 527 million euros, including interest, to Italy's Revenue Agency to settle the tax dispute. In all previous cases involving other international groups, once a settlement was reached and payment made, prosecutors closed related criminal investigations, either through plea deals or by dropping the cases. This time, however, Milan prosecutors did not share the tax authority's approach and decided to press ahead with their probe, leading to a request that the suspects be sent to trial. After December's tax settlement, Amazon said it would "forcefully defend its position on the potential ungrounded criminal case." It added: "Unpredictable regulatory environments, disproportionate penalties, and protracted legal proceedings are increasingly affecting Italy's attractiveness as an investment destination." Under what's described as a "VAT-avoidance algorithm," prosecutors accuse Amazon and four managers of enabling large-scale VAT evasion on goods sold in Italy between 2019 and 2021, allowing tens of thousands of non-EU marketplace sellers to sell goods in the country without clearly disclosing their identities. They allege that this helped the sellers avoid paying value-added tax. "Under Italian law, an intermediary offering goods for sale in Italy is jointly responsible for unpaid VAT by non-EU sellers operating through its platform," notes Reuters.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

13 Mar 2026 2:00pm GMT

Comments

13 Mar 2026 1:45pm GMT

Comments

13 Mar 2026 1:22pm GMT

Comments

13 Mar 2026 1:10pm GMT

SpaceX has started commissioning a second launch pad at the company's Starbase facility in Texas.

13 Mar 2026 12:46pm GMT

Krita developers outline their 2026 roadmap, focusing on a mobile-friendly interface, faster performance, improved color management, and a potential new file format.

13 Mar 2026 12:21pm GMT

Early benchmarks show the A18 Pro-powered MacBook Neo beating every current x86 CPU in single-core Cinebench performance, including chips from Intel and AMD. Notebookcheck reports: We have performed a couple of benchmarks and were particularly impressed by the single-core performance. Not in the short Geekbench test, but in Cinebench 2024, where a single-core test takes about 10 minutes. The A18 Pro consumes between 3.5-4 Watts in this scenario and scores 147 points. This means it is faster than every other x86 processor in our database, including the two desktop processors Intel Core Ultra 9 285K & AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D. This also means the MacBook Neo beats every modern mobile processor from AMD, Intel and also Qualcomm, even though the upcoming Snapdragon X2 chips should be a bit faster. The A18 Pro is also slightly faster than Apple's own M3 generation in this scenario. Further reading: ASUS Executive Says MacBook Neo is 'Shock' to PC Industry

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

13 Mar 2026 11:00am GMT

A witness in a London High Court case was caught using smart glasses connected to his phone to receive real-time coaching while giving evidence during cross-examination. "In my judgement, from what occurred in court, it is clear that call was made, connected to his smart glasses, and continued during his evidence until his mobile phone was removed from him," said Judge Raquel Agnello KC. "Not only have I held that Jakstys was untruthful in denying his use of the smart glasses and his calls to abra kadabra, but the effect of this is that his evidence is unreliable and untruthful." The BBC reports: The claim arose during a ruling by Judge Raquel Agnello KC in a case brought by Laimonas Jakstys over the directorship of a property development company that owns a flat in south-east London and land in Tonbridge. Jakstys was told to remove the glasses after the court noticed he "seemed to pause quite a bit" before answering questions, and that "interference" was heard coming from around the witness. The judge later found that he had been "assisted or coached in his replies to questions put to him during cross examination" during the January trial. Once the glasses were taken off, an interpreter was still translating a question when Jakstys' mobile phone began broadcasting a voice -- which he later blamed on Chat GPT. Agnello said: "There was clearly someone on the mobile phone talking to Jakstys. He then removed his mobile phone from his inner jacket pocket." He denied using the smart glasses to receive answers, and denied they were connected to his phone. But the judge said multiple calls had been made from his phone to a contact named "abra kadabra," whom he claimed was a taxi driver.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

13 Mar 2026 7:00am GMT

Calibre 9.5 introduces a reading progress column, enhancements to the e-book viewer, improved annotation filtering, and various bug fixes.

13 Mar 2026 6:56am GMT

Company says it doesn't know how long it will take to restore its Microsoft environment.

12 Mar 2026 10:18pm GMT

APTUI is a new open-source terminal UI that simplifies APT package management for Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux Mint users.

12 Mar 2026 9:02pm GMT

Unsealed messages add wrinkle to trial after US agreed to settle with Live Nation.

12 Mar 2026 8:47pm GMT