The judges of the bankruptcy court of Arezzo have reserved themselves on the declaration of insolvency requested by the commissioner of Banca Etruria Santoni and on the objection of unconstitutionality of the bail-in advanced by the lawyers of the last president Lorenzo Rosi, the lawyers De Sario and Giunta. This is what the same lawyers said at the end of this morning's hearing which lasted an hour and twenty.
The credit institution was placed under police administration in February 2015 after the Bank of Italy had identified, on the basis of the inspections carried out, a serious financial instability. The panel led by the president of the Court, Clelia Galantino, with the rapporteur judge Antonio Picardi and the judge Paolo Masetti was called to judge the insolvency request.
On 28 December the liquidator Giuseppe Santoni presented the declaration of insolvency, a necessary step after the so-called bank-saving decree approved by the government on 22 November which caused Banca Etruria to be placed into compulsory liquidation.
If the verdict accepts Santoni's appeal, the state of insolvency and bankruptcy will be declared. At that point, the Tribunal will appoint a bankruptcy trustee; should the latter identify criminally relevant conduct against the old administrators (including the former president Lorenzo Rosi and the former vice president Pier Luigi Boschi, father of the minister Maria Elena), the college of judges will send the report to the Arezzo prosecutor's office. It will therefore be up to the chief prosecutor Roberto Rossi and the other prosecutors of the pool investigating the Banca Etruria case (four strands of investigation have been opened so far) to analyze the reasons that led the credit institution to have its accounts in the deep red, assuming the crime of fraudulent bankruptcy. Santoni's report contains, among other things, a severe criticism of the management of the loans granted by the institute and never repaid due to economic difficulties, quantified at "about 3 billion euro". The report reads: "The critical issues faced with serious delay by the corporate bodies consisted in the failure to timely adopt strategies, policies and structures dedicated to the management of non-performing loans".
The hearing in the Bankruptcy Court will be opened by the rapporteur judge Antonio Picardi. Then the liquidator Giuseppe Santoni will take the floor and present his report. It will therefore be up to the lawyers of the last president of the old Banca Etruria before the commissioner, Lorenzo Rosi, the lawyers Michele Desario and Antonio Giunta, to illustrate the defense brief already deposited in the chancellery. According to what has been learned, the lawyers Desario and Giunta could raise the question of constitutionality on the bank-saving decree which would be considered illegitimate in terms of the violation of articles 3 (principle of equality) and 47 (protection of savings). If the request for a ruling by the Constitutional Court is accepted by the Arezzo judges, the hearing will be interrupted pending the sentence of the Consulta; otherwise the hearing will go ahead and the Court could decide to hear the representative of the Bank of Italy and finally the commissioners Antonio Pironi and Riccardo Sora who led the bank from February to November 2015.
