“Neither Davide Campari-Milano NV nor any of its subsidiaries are being investigated by the authorities.” This is the line, agreed with its lawyer Nerio Diodà, on which the Bitter and Aperol giant is sticking in the midst of the case that has hit it, and which yesterday also caused a new fall in the Campari share price on the stock exchange (-3.6%).
The news about the investigation by the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office into the alleged tax evasion of 1.2 billion carried out when the company headquarters were moved to Holland, went around the world, as is inevitable when dealing with a global brand. And the holding company takes refuge in those few lines: no investigation into the holding company or its subsidiaries.
Technically flawless, but the situation remains anything but rosy. Because those being investigated are neither Campari nor its subsidiaries but – what is much worse – its parent company: namely Lagfin, the Luxembourg-registered company which has control of the Dutch NV in its belly. This makes it even clearer that the investigation by prosecutors Enrico Pavone and Bianca Baj Macario affects the beverage giant and its financial strategies as a whole.
There is a report issued by the Revenue Agency against the Lagfin Italian Branch, the first step towards the formal opening of a tax dispute. The same report was sent by the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Milanese Financial Police to the Prosecutor’s Office as a crime report, with a specific crime hypothesis: article 4 of the tax law, “unfaithful declaration”. The two directors of Lagfin Italian Branch who signed the declarations relating to the move of the company headquarters abroad were formally denounced, but the Gdf itself indicates the brothers Luca (in the photo) and Alessandra Garavoglia, who through their companies, and behind a series of fiduciary screens, they control Lagfin NV.
The operation under fire began in 2018 through a series of corporate operations, with the incorporation and merger of the Italian Alicros into Lagfin, and the creation of the Italian Branch of Lagfin. These are operations which Campari now claims are regular (although not explaining the reasons) but which closely resemble the scheme followed by the Exor of the Agnelli-Elkann family and which in turn ended up under investigation by the Milanese prosecutor’s office. On Wednesday Il Sole24Ore wrote that according to the investigation documents there are contacts between Luca Garavoglia and John Elkann who would provide advice and instructions on how to move the headquarters abroad.
It is learned that a Turin trust company controlled in turn by the Pictet bank of Geneva would guarantee the Garavoglias control of the Luxembourg safe. The same trust company had been paid attention to by the Turin Prosecutor’s Office as part of the first investigations into Gianni Agnelli’s inheritance.
