There were certainly loans that caused serious losses for Banca Etruria but these were operations falling within the normal market risk or operations in which BPEL was even cheated by those who had requested the loan. This, in essence, is the underlying theme of the reasons for the sentence with which the court of Arezzo acquitted 22 defendants of fraudulent and simple bankruptcy charges on 1 October last, crimes that the judges did not commit. The college, chaired by Gianni Fruganti, only sentenced the entrepreneur Alberto Rigotti to 6 years.
The sentence, of which Judge Fruganti is the author, his last act before retirement, takes stock of the main steps of the investigation and then of the trial.
From the operation relating to Villa San Carlo Borromeo, 21 million lost by Banca Etruria, where, according to the court’s analysis, BPEL was the victim of a scam by Armando Verdiglione, who presented an AA rating and company accounts which were then sensationally denied from the subsequent financial vicissitudes. But this at the time, it is argued, the administrators who ended up under indictment could not have known. The same for the Privilege Yard financing, relating to the construction of what should have been the largest and most beautiful yacht in the world for which the interest of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie was fabled. It is true that the 25 million granted by BPEL as part of a pool loan of 80, took the path of tax havens in the Caribbean but also in this…
