LUCCA. The Court of Cassation confirms the 4-year sentence for an entrepreneur from Pistoia who had built a condominium in Lucca whose sale of apartments, with undeclared proceeds, would have been at the origin of the conviction for bankruptcy.
After the first instance sentence and the appeal verdict, which had only reduced the duration of the bankruptcy accessory penalties to four years, the Supreme Court closed the matter by rejecting the appeal of Francesco Martino Signorello, 61 years old, Sicilian origins and residence in Pistoia. The stoats reiterated the correctness of the reasons behind the conviction of the building contractor for fraudulent distractive and documentary bankruptcy, fraudulent evasion of the payment of taxes through false invoices.
«The defendant’s responsibility is rooted in his role as director of the company Assocostruzioni Srl, declared bankrupt by the Court of Pistoia on 9 October 2015 – we read in the Supreme Court ruling -. He was convicted for the diversion of assets of the bankrupt company not found in the inventory, as well as the sum of 615,713 euros relating to the sale of the properties forming part of the Melograno di Lucca condominium and that equal to over 275,000 euros corresponding to the active items indicated in the the last balance sheet filed, relating to the year 2006″.
Signorello was also held responsible for the destruction and theft of the accounting records, “the conduct was assessed as fraudulent documentary bankruptcy and also for the theft of the accounting documentation in order to avoid the payment of income and value added taxes”.
The operation on Lucca by the entrepreneur was deemed by the judges of three levels of judgment to be the cause of the bankruptcy. «The contested sentence clarified that proof of the sales of the apartments was obtained, the proceeds of which were confirmed by the defendant himself at the trial without, however, him being able to explain the destination of these proceeds – underlines the Supreme Court – not found in the social coffers or otherwise invested in company activities”.
Regarding the failure to find the accounting documents by the Financial Police, the sentence rejects the theory of theft supported by Signorello. We read on this point: «The stringent temporal sequence between receipt and disappearance, as well as the fact that the appellant attempted to attribute the lack of documentation to a theft suffered, which was never even reported, led the Court of Appeal to consider the evidence configured of the specific intent of having destroyed or stolen the accounting records in order to “prevent the detection of the distractive conduct”; which is equivalent to claiming that the conduct was guided by the aim of preventing the reconstruction of the company’s assets and of causing prejudice to creditors”. L
Pietro Barghigiani
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