Accumulated debts, missing money and only a few computers and a beat-up van in Velvet Media’s current possessions. Along with brand value and bad debts. This would seem to be the epilogue of the company established in Castelfranco Veneto in 2013 and whose events are told today by Courier. In the first years the turnover rose exponentially, reaching 16 million euros in 2020. The marketing company Velvet Media, which later transformed into Media Production, had also reached the news for its alleged cutting-edge welfare, with an organization of shift-free work, a defined “family” environment and the possibility for employees to bring their pets with them. Then, the creation of Bassel Bakdounes, an Italian-Syrian entrepreneur, began to show its financial weaknesses.
Last year Media Production ended up in judicial liquidation and, now, the financiers of the Treviso provincial command have opened an investigation into a possible bankruptcy due to distraction. While salaries and production costs were left to the old Velvet Media, the new contracts would be invoiced by a new company called Velvet Group. The hole would amount to almost 11 million euros, of which 8 are debts to the treasury – mainly due to the Revenue Agency -, to banks and to employees. The other 2 million, however, appear to have disappeared from the company’s coffers: according to investigators, this money could have ended up in the shareholders’ accounts. Furthermore, there is the case of the closure of all foreign offices, from the USA to Dubai. However, according to a former collaborator, «those offices never existed. Media Production was a fairy tale that lasted ten years but like all fairy tales there is nothing true.”
The summary report dating back to May 10, writes the Courier, indicates as 11 million and 700 thousand euros the sum that Media Production would have to shell out to conclude an orderly liquidation. Unfortunately, the company would not have any assets to sell to reach this figure: «Net of the various leasing, the assets are made up of equipment – computers, keyboards, mice – and a used Ducato van, registered in 2002. The estimate, created by Aste 33, is only 4 thousand six hundred euros. To these are added the values of the brands, for an amount of 66 thousand euros. The 3 million and 300 thousand credits that Media Production still claims from its customers are only a mirage: the amounts appear in the accounting records but the data, as stated in the summary report, is considered unreliable”.
