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Diamonds, gold necklaces, bracelets and rings, as well as luxury watches with a total value of more than 2 million euros: it is the loot, consisting of more 4 thousand jewels, seized by the Guardia di Finanza of Reggio Calabria from an alleged self-styled financial promoter from Reggio Calabria. The soldiers of the Provincial Command of the Reggio Calabria Gdf and the Special Currency Police Unit, under the coordination of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Reggio Calabria, directed by Giovanni Bombardieri, are implementing – in Italy and abroad – a provision issued by the Section Prevention measures of the local Court, which orders the seizure of assets attributable to the man, believed to be the head of a criminal association aimed at committing multiple crimes such as the illegal collection and management of savings, the sale of fake financial instruments , self-laundering and the use of money, goods or benefits of illicit origin.
The military reconstructed the assets of the alleged self-styled financial promoter by valorising the results of previous investigations, conducted by the Reggio Calabria Economic-Financial Police Unit and the Special Currency Police Unit. The investigations revealed that the man, acting under the guise of specially established financial companies, received money from hundreds of savers residing throughout Italy, promising particularly attractive returns. The collection of the money would have occurred with the stipulation of contracts as part of a “pyramid system“, a kind of “Ponzi scheme in which the revenues, which allow financing the compensation promised to the participants, do not derive from a real activity, but from the economic benefit resulting from the entry of other subjects into the system. The Reggio Public Prosecutor’s Office has delegated the Economic Protection Group of the Reggio Calabria Economic-Financial Police Unit and the IV Group of the Special Currency Police Unit to carry out economic/patrimonial investigations aimed at the application, against the aforementioned subject, of measures of real prevention. The divergence between the small declared incomes and the actual assets of the alleged false financial promoter, reconstructed by the financiers and corroborated by the declarations of the deceived savers, was deemed suitable to represent the social danger of the man, considering that he habitually lived on the illicit proceeds deriving from the illegally carried out activities. From the in-depth analysis, the Prevention Measures Section of the Court of Reggio Calabria, recognizing the validity of the proposed investigative theories, with the provision in execution has decreed the application of the asset prevention measure of functional seizure to confiscation of the aforementioned “treasure” as well as the financial availability – identified in Italy, Spain and Germany – attributable to the illegal financial promoter.
