Seizure of assets and real estate worth 74.8 million euros to the detriment of the brothers John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann and Gianluca Ferrerothe family’s historic accountant and now president of Juventus (the club is not involved). The order was made by the GIP of the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office for “tax fraud” and “fraud against the State” for the investigation regarding the accusations by Margherita Agnelli, mother of the three Elkann brothers. Below is the press release from the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office:
“Within the criminal proceedings against Gianluca Ferrero, Urs Robert Von Grünigen and the brothers John Philip, Lapo Edovard and Ginevra Elkann, the Judge for Preliminary Investigations has issued – at the request of this Office – a preventive seizure order aimed at confiscating, even for equivalent amounts, financial resources and movable and immovable assets up to an amount of approximately €74.8 million”, reads the press release from the Turin Public Prosecutor’s Office.
«Without prejudice to the presumption of innocence of the persons under investigation, as well as the possibility for them to assert, at any stage of the proceedings, their non-involvement in the crimes being investigated, on the basis of the evidentiary framework acquired to date, the crimes of fraudulent declaration through other devices (art. 3 of Legislative Decree no. 74/2000) and fraud against the State (art. 640, second paragraph, number 1., cp) have been contested. The execution of the preventive seizure decree was delegated to the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza Turin, which – upon delegation and under the coordination of this Public Prosecutor’s Office – carried out the complex and detailed investigations that affected the present criminal context, relating to the well-known affair of the inheritance following the death (in February 2019) of Marella Caracciolo and the related family disputes between Margherita Agnelli and her children John Philip, Lapo Edovard and Ginevra Elkann (respectively daughter and grandchildren of the deceased)”.
«Through the investigative activities carried out, a considerable amount of accounting and non-accounting documentation was found, including computer documentation (through the analysis of forensic copies of the devices acquired), which, at present, has confirmed the initial accusatory hypothesis, which was also the subject of the original complaint from which the criminal proceedings in question arose, concerning the fictitious foreign residence of Marella Caracciolo and the existence of a criminal plan aimed at removing her considerable assets and related income from Italian inheritance and tax laws».
“In this perspective, the investigations have progressively allowed to collect multiple and converging elements of circumstantial evidence regarding the stable residence in Italy, at least since 2010, of Marella Caracciolo. In this way, it has been revealed – always according to the accusatory hypothesis, currently submitted to the scrutiny of the Judge for preliminary investigations – the existence of an articulated strategy, aimed at representing, under a strictly formal profile, the Swiss residence of Caracciolo”.
«In light of the elements acquired during the preliminary investigations, the conduct in question was substantiated in multiple activities, also well described – by way of example – in a “memorandum” found during the searches of the office of an accused, which, in the reconstruction carried out by the Office, sets out in detail the measures deemed necessary to support the Swiss residence, measures (such as the hiring of domestic workers of Caracciolo» by one of the nephews) specifically found during the investigations».
«The investigations also concerned the instructions given by the family’s closest Italian collaborators to a Swiss family office that took care of all the tasks related to the management of Caracciolo’s Swiss position» (collecting correspondence, making payments from Swiss accounts, etc.) as well as the verification of further declarations made by the family’s actual collaborators».
«Therefore, having emerged – in the current hypothesis – that, at least since 2010, Marella Caracciolo had her actual residence in Italy, the investigators proceeded – on the basis of the elements available – to quantify the income earned by the aforementioned (since 2015, the last year useful for tax assessment purposes) and not declared to the Italian tax authorities as well as the assets to be subjected to the expected tax on inheritances and donations. In this specific regard, under the profile of:
income taxes, an evaded IRPEF (proceeds from the crime of “tax fraud”) of approximately €42.8 million was quantified, resulting from the evasion of a life annuity received by Caracciolo (amounting – in the years from 2015 to 2019 – to over €29 million) and capital gains (for approximately €116.7 million) deriving from financial assets held by trusts based in the Bahamas;
Inheritance and gift taxes, evaded taxes of over €32 million were computed, on a reconstructed estate of over €800 million, given by the availability indicated in the inventory of the estate drawn up by the Swiss executor, by the shares of a Luxembourg investment fund, by the recorded post mortem divisions among the heirs of works of art and jewels of considerable value and by the assets of a Luxembourg real estate company».