6.7 million fraud against the State, the Guardia di Finanza in Banca Progetto. The institute: 'We are the injured party'

The Brescia Finance Police, coordinated by the local Public Prosecutor's Office, executed an order on three precautionary measures and the seizure of EUR 6.7 million, with the criminal offence hypothesis of 'aggravated fraud to obtain public funds, bankruptcy, self-laundering and false corporate communications'.

The investigative activities, the Gdf explained, 'made it possible to detect several illegal conducts attributed to an agent from Brescia' who worked as a single agent of Banca Progetto (which is not under investigation) in Brescia, 'who, with the help of a collaborator and of the legal representative of a company, would have allowed the latter to benefit from three loans assisted, for the most part, by the Central Guarantee Fund in favour of SMEs of Mediocredito Centrale'.

In the context of another line of investigation, the Gdf of Como, under the direction of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Monza, is proceeding, always in these hours, to the execution of precautionary measures for similar matters against further subjects (including the above-mentioned agent from Brescia). The Brescian tax police are also conducting a search at the Milan office of Banca Progetto, which 'has been asked to produce the company's organisational model in order to assess any administrative liability profiles'.

The Project Bank itself, meanwhile, specifies that it "is an injured party in the affair" and "confirms its willingness to cooperate with the Guardia di Finanza and the competent authorities" and "reserves the right to take any appropriate initiative, also in relation to the dissemination of false and defamatory news for the damage that could be caused to the Bank".

The financing obtained in this way, according to the prosecution's indictment, 'through the production of false documentation and the alteration of the applicant company's financial statements, would have been partly transferred to the current accounts in the availability of the above-mentioned agent, through transfers justified by inconsistent business transactions'. In particular, 'the same, although formally extraneous to the management of the company receiving the loans, would have substantially taken over its administration and would have been involved in the preparation of unreliable documentation (invoices, business plans, balance sheets), in order to show financial and equity solidity'. So much so that the company benefiting from the loans 'was in a serious situation of financial instability, which did not emerge in the financial statements submitted to the credit institute and from which a judicial liquidation procedure was started in 2023'.