Santanchè case, trial begins for false accounting. The court: 'Charges to be rewritten'

The charges in which the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office is accusing the Minister of Tourism Daniela Santanchè and her co-defendants of false corporate communications in the Visibilia case and the company of shortcomings in its organisational model must be rewritten: at the first hearing against the senator of Fratelli d'Italia and 16 other people, the panel of the second criminal section of the Court of Milan, in accordance with the new case law, asked the Milanese prosecutors to reformulate the charges relating to false accounting, breaking down the individual years and positions (who did what) and to indicate what the organisational deficit of Visibilia srl in liquidation was. The Court of Milan also asked the prosecutors investigating the Visibilia case to 'produce', i.e. include in the trial file, the company's financial statements. The president of the panel, Giuseppe Cernuto, who was asked a question on the nullity of the notice of conclusion of investigations, postponed the hearing to 13 May.

In the trial for false accounting, Minister Santanchè with 15 managers and employees and a company are accused in conspiracy of having concealed 'from the public the losses', accumulated between 2016 and 2022, by the companies Visibilia Editore spa and Visibilia Editrice srl (which took a plea bargain at the preliminary hearing) and for the years 2019-2020 by Visibilia srl in liquidation (remanded for trial after the statute of limitations had expired for the previous financial statements) and of having disguised the "systematic inability" to "produce income" in order to make an "unfair profit" by avoiding both "costly recapitalisations" and more prudent management of the companies' accounts.

Together with Santanchè, the defendants include his Dimitri Kunz partner, former Giovanni Canio Mazzaro, his sister Fiorella Garnero and niece Silvia Garnero.

The schedule, barring any twists and turns, should be the constitution of civil parties, including some who were not admitted at the preliminary hearing in addition to the small shareholders led by Giuseppe Zeno. After that, in addition to the hearing schedule, it should move on to the phase of admission of evidence. And if the prosecutors have deposited a list of 18 witnesses, all technical experts who have dealt with the case, Santanchè, among others, has asked to summon some Visibilia employees and the auditors of the financial statements of Bdo Italia and Rsm to the courtroom. But also the director of the Giornale Alessandro Sallusti, as well as former partner of the Minister for Tourism.

The prosecutors will produce the companies' plea bargaining verdicts (which have become final in the meantime), the notes of the prosecution consultant, Bocconi professor Nicola Pecchiari, a dozen reports from the financial police, the Bankitalia reports signed by the Nucleo di supporto all'Autorità giudiziaria (Judicial Authority Support Unit) technicians, Marco Pacini and Stefano Guarnieri, interrogation minutes and wiretaps, such as the one in which the former manager on remand, Massimo Cipriani, speaks of a 'disaster for a minister not to pay taxes to the State'. It's November 2, 2022 and the files from the Inland Revenue Agency have just arrived on 984,000 euro of IRPEF, withholding tax and VAT which, according to the magistrates, have paved the way for the 'state of insolvency' of the then listed company that publishes magazines such as Ciack, Visto, Novella2000. Or the phone call, the following day, in which the former chairman of the board of statutory auditors, Massimo Gabelli, on a call with Kunz began: 'They challenged us on the debt, and you pay that. Instead, this stuff here, which is the goodwill (...) I don't know if we will be able to close it in the preliminary investigation phase or if we will end up at trial. It will also depend on the prosecutor, on the context, if once you have paid this amount you become a talking person who uses his head because the gdf did not want to use it'.