The sixth collegiate section of the Criminal Court of Rome has accepted 1720 constitutions of civil parties in the process relating to one of the takeover attempts at Alitalia, that one of the so-called Baldassarre consortium, a proceeding which sees defendants, in addition to Antonio Baldassarre himself, president emeritus of the Constitutional Court, also the former president of the Lazio industrialists Giancarlo Elia Valori and the two managers of the company Claudio Prati and Danilo Dini.
The charge is that of insider trading. The consortium had presented a purchase offer, competing with those of Airone and AirFrance (according to the indictment, it was this offer that blew up the negotiations) providing as a guarantee of false documents and thus ending up producing a fraudulent reduction of the shares on the public market.
In addition to Consob, Codacons and Federconsumatori Campani, among the 1720 civil parties filed, one stands out large number of small Alitalia shareholders and company employees, whose bonuses, between 1998 and 1999, were paid in shares. Shares which, in 2007, also due to the operation of the fake consortium, were devalued, significantly reducing the purchasing power of those who owned them. Now they are asking for moral and patrimonial damages.
It is the first time that savers have been admitted in a trial of market manipulation of this magnitude. Already in the context of the Cirio and Parmalat trials, the shareholders had been able to claim damages: in that case, however, the accusation was that of bankruptcy.
