Superbonus fraud and digital evidence: certifying attestations after Vicenza
In late April 2026 the Italian Financial Police seized 2.2 million euros from an engineer and several related entities in Vicenza, contesting a Superbonus 110% fraud allegedly built on inflated technical certifications and invoices for works that were never executed. The seizure came weeks after the Italian Supreme Court issued a preliminary opinion treating the creation of fictitious tax credits as a criminal offence, two signals that converge on a single question for anyone who has certified energy retrofit works during the 110% scheme: how do you prove, years later, that what was declared actually happened on site?
Construction firms, engineering and architectural practices acting as technical certifiers, tax advisors and credit assignment funds all face the same operational problem. The Italian tax authority can audit annual tax-credit quotas up to the 31st of December of the eighth year following their use. Photo-based work-in-progress reports (SAL), pre and post energy performance certificates (APE) and technical attestations filed in 2023 may therefore be challenged until 2032 or later, in proceedings where the line between full credit recovery and dismissal runs through the evidentiary strength of the documentation. The question is no longer "were the works done?" but "can we prove it, years later, before a tax judge?".
The argument of this insight is direct: companies that actually executed the works cannot rely on raw EXIF photographs, certified mail receipts and ex-post handwritten signatures as their primary defence. They need to certify at source every documentary step at the moment of its creation, building an evidentiary archive that resists backdating, metadata tampering and contested joint inspections. TrueScreen was built precisely for this level of pre-certification.
This insight is part of our guide: Construction draw inspections: legally valid photo reports for faster disbursements
What auditors actually challenge: three evidentiary weak points in Superbonus disputes
Post-2024 audits of Superbonus files do not stop at the formal review of energy filings or spending caps. The recurring objections, reconstructed by Italian construction-sector technical publications and by the case law mapped under the eIDAS Regulation and Federal Rules of Evidence equivalents, revolve around three evidentiary nodes that affect any construction site, including perfectly compliant ones.
Technical attestations with disputable dates and contents
The Vicenza seizure targeted a professional accused of certifying works that had not been carried out. Yet even attestations issued by professionals who worked correctly may be contested on purely evidentiary grounds: drafting date not unequivocally fixed, attachments that can be swapped, mismatches between what was observed on site and what is filed. A digitally signed PDF proves the integrity of the file after signing, not what happened in the hours or days before.
Photo work-in-progress reports that are partial, undated or lack verifiable geolocation
The 30% and 60% work-in-progress milestones (SAL) are the evidentiary core of the Superbonus: without photographs consistent with the declared dates, the annual quotas risk full recovery. EXIF metadata from a photograph taken on a private smartphone can be edited with free tools; a joint inspection conducted years later can hardly reconstruct the state of the construction site at a specific date. In this scenario the chain of custody of photographic evidence matters more than the quality of the shot.
Pre and post energy performance certificates with weak traceability
The energy performance certificate (APE) declares the two-class energy upgrade required to access the 110% scheme. When an APE is contested, the technician must prove the actual input parameters (geometries, materials, systems) at the moment of drafting. Without a structured archive of surveys, signed material datasheets and certified photographs, the defence becomes reconstructive and weighed down by the burden of proof.
Pre-certifying documentation: what it concretely means for a Superbonus construction site
The difference between a robust and a fragile defence, in tax litigation, lies in one point: the moment when proof is formed. The admissibility of digital evidence in court depends on its integrity at acquisition, not on a subsequent signature. Pre-certifying means intervening in the three critical moments of every 110% construction site that is still open or in progress.
Certified photographic acquisition on site, shot by shot
Every pre, intermediate and post photograph must be acquired through a forensic procedure that simultaneously crystallises image, EXIF metadata, geolocation and qualified timestamp. The point is not to shoot with a phone and sign a PDF afterwards: acquisition and certification must be the same act, performed on site. In this way any later alteration of the file leaves a technical trace, and the declared date and location become enforceable against third parties.
Digital signature and qualified timestamp on SAL at drafting time
Current practice for work-in-progress reports involves the technician's digital signature at filing. To withstand a challenge stretching to 2032, it is worth adding from the first SAL a qualified electronic timestamp issued by a third-party QTSP: the document is then proven to have existed with that content at that exact date, independently of private archives or corporate cloud storage. The timestamp, integrated in platforms like TrueScreen that invoke a qualified QTSP through API, is a tool already foreseen by the eIDAS Regulation and widely accepted in tax case law.
A structured, searchable and tamper-evident evidentiary archive
Photos, SAL, APE, material datasheets and inspection minutes must converge into a single repository, indexed by site and by date, from which the entire documentary chain of a file closed years earlier can be extracted in minutes. A digital signature guarantees the integrity of the individual file; a structured evidentiary archive guarantees the temporal coherence and completeness of the whole, which is what a tax judge actually evaluates.
What TrueScreen offers construction firms and certifying technicians
TrueScreen is the platform that acquires and certifies at source digital content with legal value: not a seal applied afterwards, but a forensic methodology that crystallises data the moment it is created. In the Superbonus context this translates into three operational components, already integrated.
The mobile app lets technicians on site acquire photographs and short videos with qualified timestamp, verified geolocation and cryptographic hash, so every shot becomes enforceable against third parties from the moment of capture. The Web Portal stores the site's evidentiary archive, makes it searchable by file and produces, years later, the complete extraction required by the tax authority or by the tax judge. The API enable integration with the management systems of technical practices, general contractors and credit-assignment funds, so pre-certification becomes a default behaviour across the supply chain, not an exceptional act.
Recurring practical case: a large firm that delivered a 110% condominium complex in 2023 is called in 2027 to supplement documentation for three annual quotas still to be offset. With a TrueScreen archive, the firm exhibits the full sequence of timestamped photo SAL, the technician's signature contextual to filing, and pre and post APE filed with the electronic seal issued by the integrated QTSP. The dispute collapses into a formal check, not an evidentiary reconstruction.
How to pre-certify residual Superbonus documentation and works in progress
For files already closed, the useful intervention is consolidation: upload existing materials (photographs, signed SAL, APE) into a TrueScreen archive and generate a proof of existence with a qualified timestamp on the entire package at the moment of consolidation. This does not rewrite the past, but it enforceably fixes the current state of the corporate archive, pre-empting accusations of retroactive manipulation.
For works in progress and for SAL not yet drafted, pre-certification is the natural defence: every shot, every site inspection minute, every material datasheet is formed inside the forensic procedure from the start. The organisational cost is marginal compared with the risk of credit recovery extending to 2032, and the documentation immediately becomes usable for other typical sector disputes too: subcontract challenges, material disputes, insurance claims on the construction site.
