Arezzo also ended up in their net about three years ago. So much so that to register for the 2020/2021 Lega Pro championship he had to replace the sureties stipulated with an English bank for a total amount of 900 thousand euros. But just yesterday, after a long investigation, the financiers of the Provincial Command of Padua carried out a provision from the Padua Court which ordered eleven personal precautionary measures (of which three in prison, four under house arrest, three obligations to stay in the municipality of residence and an obligation to report to the judicial police) and seizures worth approximately 3.5 million euros. Thus, a “criminal syndicate” was defeated, which in recent years would have defrauded Italian and foreign citizens “by procuring guarantees believed to be false or by fraudulently using an Anglo-Saxon law institution called escrow agreement or trust deposit”.
At the same time as the precautionary measures, the yellow flames carried out dozens of searches in the provinces of Benevento, Bergamo, Cremona, Florence, Foggia, Milan, Padua, Turin and Venice, with the involvement of other territorially competent departments of the Corps.
The denunciation and the role playing
The investigations started in an unusual way to say the least: from a complaint of extortion presented by a man who in reality later turned out to be one of the main suspects, considered by the investigators to be the “promoter of the hypothesized illicit activity”.
“The criminal organization – explains the Financial Police -, after having identified an audience of entrepreneurs and investors with solvency and funds in the international context, in need of further financial resources to start projects sometimes even millionaires, exploited an Anglo-Saxon financial company, characterized from an important capitalization due to the possession of hundreds of millions of dollars of Belgian government bonds, to provide them with a guarantee of solvency to be spent with primary credit institutions”. These institutions, in exchange for such important guarantees, would have provided very large loans.
The mechanism was such that the victims were induced, through a “recruiter” belonging to the organization, to contact a lawyer, who would play the role of escrow agent. The lawyer, however, once he received the sum as security from the depositors, which in some cases would have reached several million euros, divided it with his accomplices by carrying out a series of transfers to foreign current accounts opened in Estonia, Germany and United Kingdom. The objective, explain the Fiamme Gialle, was that of “recycling and self-laundering” with conduct “aimed at hindering the identification of the criminal origin of the supplies”.
When the victims understood that the guarantees that the London company should have provided them were slow in arriving, they asked the escrow agent for clarification. But the lawyer, in order not to repay the withheld sums, completely faking his role as mediator, took legal action against the competent authorities for the non-compliance of the overseas beneficiary.
Not only did Arezzo end up in the crosshairs of the criminal organization. Livorno and Novara had also been scammed in the same period. The clubs were looking for financial guarantees for registration in the Lega Pro championship and had turned to self-styled professionals. Except then having to run for cover.
With the investigation by the Padua prosecutor’s office, the gang was defeated.
