Indictment has been requested for the former top management of Il Sole 24 Ore in Milan as part of the investigation into the newspaper's accounts. Prosecutor Gaetano Ruta requested the trial of Roberto Napoletano, former editorial director of the newspaper and considered by the magistrates "de facto administrator" of the group, Donatella Treu, former managing director, and Benito Benedini, former president. The alleged crimes are false corporate communications and information rigging and concern the period between 2014 and 2016.
In the same investigation, indictment was also requested for the publishing company as a result of law 231/2001 on the administrative liability of entities with regard to both crimes charged against the former top management and the former director in charge. Filed the position of seven other suspects who were accused of embezzlement and against which the group, after being compensated, withdrew the lawsuit.
The prosecution claims that the digital sales of the economic newspaper have been inflated to create a deviation between the representation of the company's economic situation and the actual situation. The company would have declared a number of digital copies higher than the real ones, sending the paper ones to the pulping machine in parallel, in order to increase revenues.
In detail, the crime of false corporate communications is disputed because, according to the magistrates, the three suspects "in order to ensure themselves and third parties an unfair profit, disclosed" in the accounts of the first half-year 2015, as at 30 September 2015 and in the financial statements of the same year, "material facts that do not correspond on the economic, equity and financial situation of the company, in particular on the economic performance of the newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, on the sales of digital and paper copies associated with them".
Through this mechanism, according to the prosecutors, "a representation was always aimed at overestimating the management results of the company's most significant asset - the Il Sole 24 Ore newspaper - in particular the revenues generated from the sale of copies and market penetration , also minimizing the losses accrued through the aggregation of different business areas”.
The insider trading is however contested because, according to the Public Prosecutor's Office, Napoletano, Treu and Benedini would have spread "false news regarding the economic and financial situation". The news on the results would also have had an impact on the share's performance (today -0,5%): the group is in fact listed on the Stock Exchange. It is no coincidence that Consob also intervened on the matter last week, imposing a fine of 240 thousand euros on the former CEO and director of the Giornale for market manipulation. Fines of 140 thousand euros were imposed on Anne Matthew (marketing manager), Massimo Arioli (financial director), Alberto Biella (sales manager).
