Milan — Italian investigators have seized documents from the Milan offices of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) as part of a probe into allegations of fraud at one of its customers, BT Italy, a unit of Britain’s BT Group, sources said. Dozens of tax police visited the Italian offices of nine suppliers to BT Italy including the US tech group, on Thursday, as well as BT Italy’s own headquarters, and took documents away, said sources familiar with the probe. IBM spokesman Alessandro Ferrari said the company was co-operating with authorities. The US group is not formally under investigation and none of its representatives has been accused of wrongdoing, but the warrant for Thursday’s seizures states that some transactions between BT Italy and its suppliers were faked. The warrant authorised the search for evidence in relation to allegations that former BT Italy managers had conspired with suppliers and customers to fake orders and to issue false credit notes in order to ...
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