The investigation is closed. The last chapter therefore for the investigations by the Milan public prosecutor's office, which had put under the magnifying glass the purchases of Premafin shares, the holding company through which the Ligresti family controlled Fondiaria-Sai, made between 2 November209 and 16 September 2010. According to the accusation, it is market manipulation aimed at keeping up the share price of the company listed on the Stock Exchange, of which Unipol now holds over 80%.
The operations would be carried out through two trusts based in the Bahamas (Ever Green and Heritage). Giancarlo De Filippo turns out to be the trustee of the Heritage fund (which still holds 2,3% of Premafin, according to Consob data) and the asset manager of The EverGreen Security Trust. According to Consob, Salvatore Ligresti was behind the duetrusts. Niccolò Lucchini, on the other hand, would have received the mandate to operate on Premafin stock.
Based on the hypothesis formulated by the public prosecutor Luigi Orsi, owner of the file, the companies controlled by the two trusts between 2 November 2009 and 16 September 2010 bought Premafin shares at the close of the Stock Exchange in such a way as to condition the performance of the title. The beneficiaries of the operation, according to the prosecution, would have been the Ligrestis and their companies, in particular Imco and Sinergia, which in this way had not found themselves in a position to give additional guarantees to the banks to which they had pledged the Premafin shares the title having been held up, I suspect, in an artificial way.
