After a life of work spent abroad, Aldo, of Salento origins, and his wife, bought a house in Racale in 2017. Once stabilized they decide to invest their savings, and in August 2020 they meet a local gold trader and are convinced to invest in gold rather than any other banking solution, saying that the ingots would become exclusive property with the possibility of using free of charge of the armored vault that the entrepreneur had at his Racale headquarters. Two sellers arrive from Rome on behalf of the trader and with them the spouses sign the contract deciding to purchase a kilo of gold, consisting of two 500 gram ingots, making a transfer of 54 thousand 248 euros and 89 cents to Esposito Group Spa Last May, after four years, needing liquidity for economic reasons, they ask to withdraw what is their property. But they discovered that the company owned by Emanuele Esposito had been subjected to a precautionary measure and that the man, released from prison in March 2023, was probably no longer in Italy. In the past few hours the judicial administrator has informed the spouses that the gold is not there. In fact, it was November 2022 when the finance company carried out seven precautionary measures against promoters, organisers, administrators, frontmen and freelancers accused of criminal association, issuing and/or using invoices for non-existent operations, money laundering, self-laundering, evasion of payment of taxes and fraudulent bankruptcy. At the center of the operation was Esposito, a professional operator in the trade of gold, precious metals and investment gold, who according to investigators would be the author of a dense network of paper companies (Italian and foreign) and of a complex system of tax fraud and international money laundering. The married couple, defended by the lawyer Alberto Ghezzi, filed a complaint for embezzlement.
THE COMMENT:
“I feel like I’m in prison, because it’s not possible to live without gold. I feel really bad. We couldn’t even go to our nephew’s baptism because we don’t have the means. We placed all our life savings, with sacrifices, in metal, only to discover that we had nothing. We ask for justice, truth, protection and to get our savings back. I trust in the judiciary.”
