Stefano Ricucci was arrested. Again. This time together with the Roman entrepreneur his business partner Liberato Lo Conte and Nicola Russo, judge of the Lazio regional tax commission and the Council of State (already suspended from office) ended up in handcuffs. The accusation, for all three, is of corruption in judicial acts. The operation is the same (“Easy judgement”) that in July 2016 had led to the arrest of Ricucci and Mirko Coppola for tax crimes.
The investigations, conducted by the soldiers of the Economic and Financial Police Unit of Rome, revealed a corruptive agreement between Ricucci, Lo Conte and Russo. The agreement would concern the issuing of a sentence in the context of a tax dispute between Magiste Real Estate Property (attributable to Ricucci) and the Revenue Agency on a VAT credit of over 20 million euros claimed by the company against the 'Treasury.
Ricucci and Lo Conte are in prison, while Russo has been granted house arrest.
Russo, writes the investigating judge in the precautionary measure, was linked to the suspects "by bonds of trust based on friendship, common connection of interests and attendance, at the basis of the illicit corruptive agreement also materialized in gifts and economic and favorable provisions". Including the payment of dinners and evenings in prestigious hotels, restaurants and Roman night clubs. The magistrate, instead of abstaining given the conflict of interest, would have favored his friends, in his capacity as rapporteur and drafter of the second degree sentence, in favor of the Magiste, who had reformed the previous ruling of the Provincial Tax Commission, of the opposite sign .
On February 26, 2008, Ricucci negotiated a one-year prison sentence for the takeover of Antonveneta plus the confiscation of about 29 million euros in capital gains. For the attempted takeover of RCS, however, in December 2008 he bargained for 3 years (including the year negotiated in Milan for Antonveneta) but the crimes had been committed before May 2006 and the sentence was covered by a pardon.
