In the matter of derivatives, the Municipality of Milan behaved with an "unforgivable levity" and was not "up to the task". Oscar Magi, judge of the Court of Milan, writes it in the reasons for the sentence of nine bank officials and four credit institutions. The case concerns the 100 million euro fraud organized through transactions with derivative instruments against the Municipality of Milan.
"There can be no doubt that the Municipality did not behave in any moment of the transaction then concluded as a qualified operator", so much so that "entrusting the creation and management of the swap contract to the same banks which managed the placement of the bond as arrangers was a formidable ingenuity which, although also caused by the interested council of the arrangers themselves, demonstrates in a very clear way what was the contractual capacity of the Municipality and the clarity of information deployed in the affair”.
Furthermore, for the judge, Palazzo Marino "accepting as correct a calculation of economic convenience made and redone by consultant banks, but also by counterparties, was an unforgivable frivolity which, however, could only be interpreted as an evident contractual incapacity , and, therefore and consequently, in need of protection and clarity of information and not of complacent exploitation".
All of this means "that the banks treated the counterparty in a substantially and formally incorrect way - concludes the judge -, taking advantage of an asymmetrical situation which, however, they had a duty to rebalance".
