Mps, former top management on trial for failure to set aside NPLs 2015-2016

The former chairman and former CEO of Mps, Alessandro Profumo and Fabrizio Viola, have been indicted, along with two other defendants, for false corporate communications in the case of alleged irregularities in the accounting of impaired loans for the years 2014 to 2017. In 2015 alone, a figure of EUR 7.550 billion is mentioned. This was decided by the gup of Milan, Fiammetta Modica, at the end of the preliminary hearing, which lasted two years, to which another strand had been added over time, again on non-performing loans. Along with Viola and Profumo, another former chairman of the bank, Massimo Tononi, and former manager Arturo Betunio are also going on trial. On the other hand, the other four defendants have been acquitted: former CEO Marco Morelli, former manager Nicola Clarelli and former chairmen Alessandro Falciai and Stefania Bariatti. "I never had any doubts about the innocence of Stefania Bariatti, Marco Morelli and Nicola Clarelli," said lawyer Giuseppe Iannaccone, who assisted them with colleagues Riccardo Lugaro and Annagiulia Zambelli.

After more than two years of hearings, and with more than 4,700 civil parties admitted, including associations, savers and investors, in essence, the preliminary hearing judge decided to send to trial the defendants in the so-called 'Mps3' file, namely Profumo, Viola, Tononi and Betunio for the hypotheses of false corporate communications, except for the false accounting of 2014, because it was time-barred. This was the strand for which the gup Teresa De Pascale had ordered the forced indictment, with a surprise decision in May last year. Prosecutors Giovanna Cavalleri and Cristiana Roveda had asked for a non-suit for five defendants, including Profumo, and had instead reiterated the request for trial for three, including Viola, on charges of false corporate communications in relation to the 2015 financial statements and the half-yearly report as at 30 June 2016.

Viola and Profumo have already been definitively acquitted, along with Paolo Salvadori, then chairman of the board of statutory auditors, and the Siena bank itself, in the case of the alleged erroneous accounting of the Santorini and Alexandria derivatives, i.e. the 'Mps bis' trial. The first trial in the Mps case, on the other hand, is the one that ended with the final acquittals of former top management Giuseppe Mussari and Antonio Vigni and all other defendants. The new trial for Profumo and Viola will begin on 16 October.

The proceedings that ended today with the committal for trial of the four managers had originated from a request for archiving by the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office itself: a request rejected by the then Gip Guido Salvini, who had ordered a maxi expert report (5,662 pages plus 55.885 pages of attachments), drafted by Gian Gaetano Bellavia and Fulvia Ferradini and filed on 26 April 2021, according to which the Sienese credit institution, between 2012 and 2015, had not timely accounted for adjustments to loans totalling EUR 11.4 billion in its financial statements. Subsequently, a new investigation file was opened by prosecutor Roberto Fontana (now at the Csm) and by prosecutors Giovanna Cavalleri and Cristiana Roveda.

"The gup's decision belies the version of Mps' CEO Luigi Lovaglio, according to which Mps' balance sheet is now free of legal risks," he said. This was affirmed by Giuseppe Bivona, a financier of the Bluebell Capital Partners activity fund, a historical accuser of the bank's past management and who presented an opposition to the initial request for archiving by the Public Prosecutor's Office. The bank of Siena did so in a statement in which it specifies that the decision of the preliminary hearing judge "does not generate an impact of any kind for the Bank. As is well known," the note reads, "the impaired loans affair has recorded 18 positive civil judgments in favour of Banca Mps, which has always adopted, as in this case, conservative budget policies.