Italian police uncover widespread tax evasion amongst yacht owners Most of the boats were of a substantial size - 755 were 30ft long or larger. The raid in Bari, carried out on Tuesday, was the latest crackdown on haunts favoured by the wealthy. In a campaign which began just before Christmas, tax inspectors have targeted the upmarket ski resorts of Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the Dolomites, and Courmayeur, on the border with France, as well as the owners of top-of-the-range sports cars in Milan and Florence. The checks are part of a concerted effort by the technocrat government of Mario Monti, the prime minister, to recover some of the billions of euros lost through tax evasion each year in an effort to whittle away the country's 1.9 trillion euro national debt. Italy's black economy, which includes evasion of income tax and VAT, amounts to 275 billion euros a year, or 17.5 per cent of GDP, according to official figures. Last year, only 72,000 Italians declared a gross annual income of more than 200,000 euros - representing less than two per cent of all tax payers. In Cortina d'Ampezzo, tax officials traced the owners of 133 Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other luxury cars and found that 42 of their owners - nearly a third - had declared incomes of less than 22,000 euros (£18,000) a year.