He had taken the field in the ranks of 5 Star Movement, running as regional councilors for the elections to be held on 8 and 9 June together with the European elections. But the plan of Marco Allegretti now he risks falling through: his name, together with that of his father Giuseppe, is at the center of two complex investigations carried out by the prosecutor’s office of Asti and that of Turin. The initial charge is of fraudulent tax evasion, with several branches emerging from an extensive Internal Revenue Service audit.
The accusations
The news was broken by La Repubblica di Torino, which reports that the prosecutor’s office has opened two files against Marco Allegretti: one in Turin and the other in Asti. The investigations concern his research activities and tax credits, linked to an alleged person huge scam which would have started with the resale of the theses of the Polytechnic of Turin to obtain tax credits.
One line of investigation concerns the attempt to conceal 23 buildings in Asti and another 6 in Turin to avoid a collection procedure of over two million euros. The other concerns alleged research projects openly carried out by Allegretti’s companies, transferred to third parties or used to obtain tax credits as capitalized costs of research and development activities, credits which were then compensated by his companies or third parties. It would thus be an alleged maxi-scam on tax credits: using the degree theses of students of the Polytechnic of Turin and university projects sold in “packages” to companies, they were obtained 50 percent deductions, in exchange for a portion of those benefits.
The prosecutor of Asti, Gabriele Fiz, is investigating Alma Engineering, while the prosecutor of Turin, Mario Bendoni, has opened a case involving several companies linked to the Cifs and Cinfai consortia, and to EnviSens Technologies srl, a spinoff of the Polytechnic. There are around ten companies involved in the credit creation mechanism, with contested crimes ranging from the issuing and use of invoices for non-existent operations to undue compensation. The estimated turnover is tens of millions of euros.
A boulder for the party of Giuseppe Conte and for Sarah Disabato, presidential candidate for the 5 Star Movement in Piedmont, who in recent days had spent kind words for Allegretti and who had fought for his candidacy from the beginning. The elections in Piedmont will be held on 8 and 9 June, together with those Europeans. No news has yet arrived from the five-star party on Allegretti’s consequences, so it is not known whether he will be forced to retire or will remain in the race for a position as regional councilor.
The previous
And the mind now goes back to a year and a half ago, when Allegretti was removed from Finpiemontea company that supports investments in the regional territory and the management of tenders for companies, for a suspected conflict of interest and lack of transparency regarding his and his family’s holdings in various companies. At the time, Allegretti, president of the Order of Engineers of Asti, had counterattacked, defining the provision as an “exquisitely political” decision and declaring: “I have never omitted anything. All investments have been declared, nothing has ever been omitted or hidden.”
Marco Allegretti’s candidacy had been claimed in a recent electoral confrontation by Sarah Disabato, presidential candidate for the 5 Star Movement in Piedmont, with the representative of the 5 Star Movement who had praised Allegretti’s work in Finpiemonte, underlining his work analyzing tender flows and his commitment to guaranteeing an important process: getting the funding to companies. And in a certain sense, exactly how Allegretti got the financing into the companies is now a matter of investigation for the investigators.
