88 investigated for an 8 million euro scam – BitontoLive.it

Eighty-eight people, including the pro tempore top management of Banca Popolare di Bari and the managers of the branches of the credit institution, were reached by a notice of conclusion of the preliminary investigations, issued by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Bari, regarding an investigation into an alleged eight million euro scam.

The suspects will have to defend themselves, in various capacities, against the fraud crimes involved, in relation to their respective functions.

The notices of the conclusion of the investigations come at the end of intense activity carried out by the economic-financial police unit of the Guardia di Finanza of Bari, under the coordination of the Prosecutor’s Office, resulting from the complaints presented by 176 people who were allegedly induced “through artifices and scams, as well as taking advantage of the particular situation of vulnerability, to purchase “illiquid” and highly risky financial products issued by the banking institution.

According to the reconstructions of the yellow flames, the people under investigation “did not provide investors with appropriate information to consciously make their investment choices”.

The prosecutor accuses the suspects of having violated the provisions on financial intermediation, manipulating the risk profiling questionnaire, with the aim of laying the foundations for the subsequent placement of financial instruments evidently inadequate to the personal characteristics and objectives of the offended person.

Furthermore, the collection of all the information necessary for the purposes of evaluating the adequacy of the financial instrument to be placed in relation to the experience, knowledge and investment objectives of the customers would have been omitted; the delivery to customers of the documents required by law and adequate information on the illiquid and particularly risky nature of the security, not traded on regulated markets and characterized by a risk, which had to be specifically represented.

The dispute also concerns the preparation and use of a customer profiling questionnaire model which facilitated the attribution to the investor of a medium/medium-high synthetic risk profile, suitable for the placement of Banca Popolare’s own shares from Bari; the fraudulent attribution to financial instruments of a lower level of synthetic risk than that attributed to listed and unlisted shares of third-party banks, in order to manipulate the assessment of adequacy/appropriateness of customers’ investment transactions; indication in the sales prospectus of the financial instruments of unclear information on their risk factors and the implementation of inadequate procedures aimed at processing sales orders in clear violation of the equality of the shareholders with consequent impossibility of selling the shares themselves at the moment in which which there was the possibility.