Soldiers from the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza of Reggio Calabria and the Special Unit of the Currency Police, under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Reggio Calabria, directed by Giovanni Bombardieri, are implementing – in Italy and abroad – a provision, issued by the Prevention Measures Section of the local Court, which orders the seizure of assets attributable to a self-styled financial promoter from Reggio Emilia, believed to be the head of a criminal association aimed at committing multiple crimes such as the illegal collection and management of savings, the sale of fake financial instruments, self-laundering and the use of money, goods or benefits of illicit origin. In particular, the huge assets subjected to seizure consist of over 4,000 precious items, including diamonds, necklaces, bracelets and gold rings, as well as luxury watches with a total value of more than 2 million euros.
The investigations
The reconstruction was carried out by valorising the results of previous investigations, conducted by the Reggio Calabria Economic-Financial Police Unit and the Special Currency Police Unit, in which it emerged that the proposed party, acting under the screen of specifically constituted financial companies, would have received money from hundreds of savers, resident throughout Italy, promising particularly attractive returns. The collection of money would have taken place through the stipulation of contracts as part of a “pyramid system”, in which the revenues, which allow financing the compensation promised to the participants, do not derive from a real activity, but from the economic benefit resulting from the entry of other subjects into the system (so-called “Ponzi scheme”).
The local Public Prosecutor’s Office – increasingly interested in the economic-financial aspects linked to crime – has delegated the Economic Protection Group of the Reggio Calabria Economic-Financial Police Unit and the IV Group of the Special Currency Police Unit to carry out economic/patrimonial investigations aimed at the application of real prevention measures towards the aforementioned subject. The divergence between the small declared incomes and the actual availability of the false financial promoter, reconstructed by the financiers and corroborated by the declarations of the duped savers, was deemed suitable to constitute – at the stage of the proceedings and without prejudice to any subsequent assessment on the merits – the social danger of the subject, considering that the same habitually lived on the illicit proceeds deriving from the illegally carried out activities. Following this in-depth analysis, the Prevention Measures Section of the Court of Reggio Calabria, recognizing the validity of the proposed investigative theories, with the provision in execution decreed the application of the asset prevention measure of functional seizure to the confiscation of the aforementioned “treasure” as well as the financial availability – identified in Italy, Spain and Germany – attributable to the illegal financial promoter.
