An accountant and two lawyers were sent to trial by the preliminary hearings judge. The accusation, for all, is of complicity in auction rigging and private interest of the liquidator in the bankruptcy documents. An investigation that might sound like “technical”, but which in reality started a chain reaction that caused a small earthquake in the world of bankruptcy procedures in the Court of Como.
The failure and the investigation
The story is that of the failure of the empire of Giovanni Maspero, in his own way a magician in the world of mobile phones capable of building an industrial empire thanks to his intuitions on smartphones, but then overwhelmed by tens of millions of euros of losses (just last the trial began this week in which he is accused of fraudulent bankruptcy), mainly due to debts with the treasury. A small galaxy of companies referred to him: the parent company was Giovanni Maspero & C., which then included Prima Comunicazione Group srl (specialised in the marketing, and not only, of telephones), also declared bankrupt, Prs Lab srl, a laboratory of analysis for the safety of telephony products (interesting production reality, functioning despite economic difficulties) and Theoria srl (which also went bankrupt) which managed the starred restaurant I Tigli in Theoria di Como until a few months ago, then definitively closed.
At the time of the bankruptcy of the parent company, the Como Bankruptcy Court appointed the Como accountant Giuseppe Fasana, a well-known professional from Como and widely used by Como judges for the management of complex insolvency procedures, as trustee of the creditors’ interests. And Fasana himself, on Friday, was sent to trial together with the former lawyer of the Maspero bankruptcy, the lawyer Carlo Bresciani, and the consultant of the Phonixa Spa company Davide Boschi. The sole director of Phonixa Sabrina Boschi was removed because she could not be found when the summons for the hearing was served.
Renting and selling
Phonixa Spa is the company that was interested in renting and then purchasing the Pc Group business unit in Maspero. The law provides that first the rental and then the sale must follow procedures that favor competition between interested parties, to obtain the most advantageous economic conditions for creditors. And those procedures must be followed by the curator himself.
Fasana is accused of having circumvented the competitive procedures by first leasing the Maspero company to Phonixa through a private negotiation, then putting the business unit up for sale, effectively favoring Phonixa itself. The trial against the three professionals is set for next December. While Fasana’s precautionary suspension as bankruptcy trustee and, in general, from proceedings related to corporate crises will soon end. Translated: from mid-May the accountant will be able to be appointed curator again by the Court.
