Adinolfi under house arrest for fraud: €4.7 million in watches, boats and travel
Journalist and former deputy Mario Adinolfi is under house arrest for alleged fraud linked to a betting scheme. The judge cites luxury purchases worth millions of euros.
House arrest for Adinolfi: judge reconstructs million-euro flows
As reported by Google News IT — Crime, Mario Adinolfi was placed under house arrest this morning in an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza for alleged fraud linked to a betting scheme.
The Rome investigating judge Giulia Arcieri justified the precautionary measure in her order, emphasising "the cunning, the persistence, the unscrupulousness in the overall design and execution of the criminal project", which — the magistrate writes — is indicative of a "marked propensity for concealing income flows and evading financial administration controls".
From checks on bank accounts traceable to the journalist and former deputy, the Guardia di Finanza established movements of over €4.7 million in the last five years. Only part of these sums is linked to sports betting activities; the bulk was allegedly transferred to third parties and used to purchase luxury goods: watches, bullion, foreign coins, paintings, vessels and payments for travel abroad, including the Maldives and Egypt.
Judge Arcieri highlights an element she considers significant: despite financial movements "in the hundreds of thousands of euros" on accounts directly in Adinolfi's name, the investigated person does not appear to own any property, nor holds company stakes or positions in commercial entities. "He appears only as the owner of one car", Arcieri writes.
Regarding registered moveable property — vessels and cars — the judge emphasises that these, "remarkably, except for the motor vehicle, are not traceable to Adinolfi as a natural person despite having been purchased by him with money from his own bank accounts".
The magistrate furthermore notes the existence of foreign bank accounts belonging to the investigated person, including one in Lithuania, on which investigations are ongoing. "It is therefore evident how the investigated person takes care to avoid the formal registration to himself of property and how he has the shrewdness to disperse his wealth by distancing it from formal attribution to himself", the order states.
Source: Google News IT — Crime (it)