In his career, the entrepreneur Flavio Carboni has "regularly" made his own assets and companies in the name of other people, and he did so also in 2016 with boats, vehicles and company shares for a value of more than 20 million pounds; there is no proof, however, that in the latter case he did so "fraudulently" to avoid the application of measures to prevent property from the judicial authorities. Thus, lacking on the one hand the subjective element, i.e. the will to strip off assets at risk of seizure, and in the second offense also the objective element, the process ends with the acquittal of the elderly businessman from Torralba and the other seven defendants accused in various ways of criminal association (the fact does not exist) and fraudulent transfer of values (the fact does not constitute a crime).
Accusations and defendants
The sentence pronounced yesterday by the judges of the second criminal section, which embraced the requests of the defense lawyers and the prosecutor Guido Pani himself, allows Carboni to celebrate his ninetieth birthday in the best possible way, which falls today. With him, who in the initial reconstruction had "set up, organized and directed the criminal association", his wife Maria Laura Scanu Concas, Antonella Pau and Lorenzo Di Martino also leave the trial clean (all three were responsible for the association crime together with Carboni), Ugo Benedetti, Fabrizio Avondoglio, Diego Carboni and Luisella Corda.
The investigations
The investigation was started six years ago by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate when the Gico della Guardia di Finanza had discovered that Carboni, who has no property, had cars available (Mercedes Cls, Audi Q7, Hummer H2 and H1 for a value of over 100 thousand euros) and a rubber dinghy (Capelli tempest, 65 thousand euros), prescribed facts, company shares (Itr srl, Exagon Housing system in London, Gracom ltd in London, Italgraphene srl in Cagliari) and an office in Rome in via Ludovisi (headquarters of the Itr, company worth "80 thousand euros"). Assets in the name of other people that the military and prosecutors had considered the figurehead of the Sardinian businessman, in the hypothesis the owner of those assets worth more than 20 million pounds. At the start of the trial, the investigators had recalled that already in 1987, 1988 and 1994 the Public Prosecutor of Rome had asked for a measure of personal and property prevention for Carboni: the applications had been rejected but remembering it was useful to them to demonstrate the the entrepreneur's habit of setting up "fraudulent transfers of values".
The requests
In the meantime, however, the eleventh accused (Riccardo Piana, accused of fraudulent transfer of values) had chosen the shortened procedure and had been acquitted by the GUP. So yesterday the prosecutor decided to "share" the judge's assessments on the lack of the subjective element (Carboni had never heard of the previous requests for kidnapping, among other things) and asked for the acquittal for all. As did the lawyers Roberto Sorcinelli (for the two Carboni, Scanu and Pau), Annamaria Busia (for Corda and Avondoglio), Alberto de Vita (Di Martino) and Gianni Scarpato (Benedetti).
An. M.