Milan, 9 June 2024 – Almost 100 thousand euros never paid to the Municipality between 2017 and 2019. It is the huge shortfall generated in the coffers of Palazzo Marino by failure to transfer the tourist tax collected in New Generation hostels.
The exact figure – 94,756.1 euros – was calculated by the Court of Auditors of Lombardy, which now condemned the companies management and the administrator Roberto Maria M. to pay the debt to the administration of Piazza Scala. There are four accommodation facilities in the sights: the Città Studi, Brera and Delval Living hostels are part of the European Union Efs Youth Alliance Foundation, while the Urban Navigli hostel in via Burigozzo refers to the New Generation Hostel srl, a social enterprise.
In the first case, the Accounting Prosecutor’s Office contested a figure of 65,542.10 euros for payments not made between 2017 and 2018 and between summer 2018 and winter 2019; in the second case, the debt of 29,214 euros it was accumulated between June 1st 2016 and August 31st 2017 (with a single month of “respite” in November 2016) and between June 1st and October 31st 2019. The company lawyer and director disputed the unfoundedness of the chargethe absence of fiscal damage and accounting fraud.
As? “The defendants – we read in the sentence – represented that they never had the desire for personal enrichment, but rather that they found themselves, due to Covid-19, in a temporary liquidity crisis situationconstituting a cause of force majeure, with consequent non-attributability of the omitted payment”.
It’s still: the lawyer filed a copy of the applications for debt installmentsarguing that the “presentation, by eliminating the tax damage, would paralyze the accounting action undertaken or, in any case, would lead to the suspension of the proceedings in order to reach a ruling on the cessation of the matter of dispute”.
A line completely rejected by the Court, which had an easy time declaring it as “unfounded and specious” the justification linked to the coronavirus: “The amounts collected and not repaid refer to a period prior to the tragic pandemic events and the consequent containment measures”. AND the installment plan? For the judges, there is no written record of the Municipality’s consent to the total payment of the amount in 36 monthly installments.
