Tax credit, the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office investigates the former company of Cinecittà's CEO

Over one hundred films that obtained tax credit financing with often very poor box office results. These are works produced by companies on which the Rome Public Prosecutor's Office is continuing its investigation, which has currently opened five files hypothesising a series of offences: from strictly economic crimes to profiles linked to offences in the public administration. Proceedings are still at an embryonic stage, and according to what has filtered through Piazzale Clodio, there are no people on the register of suspects, but investigations have already begun following the acquisition of documents by the police at the request of the public prosecutors.

Among the companies that ended up under the investigators' lens was also One More Pictures, founded by Manuela Cacciamani and led by her until June 2024 when she was appointed managing director of Cinecittà, the Spa controlled by the Ministry of the Economy. For this strand of the investigation, as well as a number of others, at the beginning of August, the men of the Guardia di Finanza's Nucleo di Polizia Valutaria also went to the Ministry of Culture to request the handing over of documents relating to public funds and tax credits from which various companies have benefited, even cashing in six-figure sums for films that in some cases did not even reach the public.

The takeover request was formalised to Mario Turetta, head of the Department for Cultural Activities and for a few weeks interim head of the General Directorate for Cinema, following the resignation at the beginning of last July of Nicola Borrelli. At the attention of those investigating, since the end of July, also the affair concerning the production company that obtained substantial funding for the film 'Stars of the Night', whose director, with the alias Rexal Ford, is Francis Kaufmann, the 49-year-old accused of the double murder at Villa Pamphili.

The Kaufmann affair led to an intervention by the minister himself, Alessandro Giuli, who openly spoke out against the 'film fantasma', asking his offices for a series of checks and strengthening inspection activities. At the end of July, the directorate general of the ministry was working on 200 works from 2020-2024 for a total of around EUR 350 million. The Rome Public Prosecutor's Office on tax credit for alleged ghost films had received complaints from M5S. "We will continue to monitor and denounce this vermin that damages the world of cinema for the interests of a very few, all belonging to a small circle close to this government," says M5s deputy Gaetano Amato