The Milan prosecutor questioned Salvatore Ligresti this morning for over two hours. Ligresti was heard by Luigi Orsi, the prosecutor who is investigating the Premafin and Fondiaria-Sai galaxy. Ligresti, who is being investigated by the Milan prosecutor's office for insider trading and obstacle to the supervisory authority, was questioned to address several issues related to the ongoing investigations. According to the indictment, the contested crime of impeding supervision concerns an alleged agreement between Mediobanca and the Ligresti to ensure the family a 45 million euro severance pay in exchange for the merger between Premafin and the Unipol group. At the center of the story is also the famous papello signed by the managing director of mediobanca Alberto Nagel, as a result of which the CEO was also questioned by the prosecutor Orsi. The accusation of insider trading, on the other hand, concerns the story of two foreign trusts that are Premafin's shareholders, which, according to the investigations, were found to be attributable to Ligresti. A third line of investigation also relates to the bankruptcies of the companies Imco and Sinergia.
Meanwhile, the Fondiaria-Sai offices in Turin, Milan, Bari and Naples have been searched by the Turin financial police. According to what has been learned, this is an operation aimed at discovering alleged IT tampering in the management of claims. The premises searched are those to which the territorial areas in which the most critical issues in determining the reserve belong. The seizure of computers, hard drives and other IT material is underway. The objective of the investigations is to understand whether the fraudulent practice of the apparent closure of claims has been carried out, which are actually still open, in order to lower the provision for the payment of claims envisaged in the financial statements. According to the investigators' hypothesis, keeping the reserve low constitutes the crime of false accounting (it also allows the distribution of higher profits) for which the managers of the insurance company are being investigated. The investigation was launched last summer by the Turin prosecutor's office on charges of false accounting, relating to the period 2008-2011, with eight suspects plus Fondiaria Sai itself.
