The fictitious residence in Switzerland, the doubts about the authenticity of the signatures, the treasure hidden in tax havens. A large part of the recent theses that Margherita Agnelli put forward in the endless legal battle over the inheritance of her father Gianni Agnelli is now finding support from the Turin public prosecutor's office.
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ANSA agency Elkann breaks silence, “no tax violation” – News – Ansa.it Lawyers' note on Margherita's complaint: “Her thesis was never recognized by the judges” (ANSA)
John Elkann's lawyers, registered in the register of suspects, state that the woman has “persecuted her parents and three of her children (John, Lapo and Ginevra Elkann – editor's note) in all judicial offices for twenty years” with initiatives that have landed so far them in a hole in the water. However, the search warrant signed by the Public Prosecutor's Office begins precisely with the text of the complaint submitted by Margherita last December 23: “Multiple conduct by some people with the aim of creating the appearance of a residence in Switzerland that is in fact fictitious”. Mother, Marella Caracciolo, widow of the lawyer who died on February 23, 2019 at the age of 92.
For now, this is the core of the subalpine judges' investigation. According to them, attempts were made to hide the fact that the elder Marella lived “usually” in a villa on Turin Hill for two reasons: from a hereditary point of view, to eliminate her succession from the Italian system; from a tax perspective, to avoid “the taxation of large assets and income in Italy”. At the “suggestion” of accountant Gianluca Ferrero (whose position as president of Juventus is not being investigated as part of the investigation), John Elkann would have listed people who actually worked for Marella and who were employed by FCA Security and Stellantis Europa as having leases for properties completed, over which the grandmother had usufruct. The alleged criminal offense is “unfaithful tax returns”.
Under an agreement from 2004, Margherita paid her mother a pension: around 8 million, which was credited in 2018 to a bank account in Vaduz registered with an offshore company based in the British Virgin Islands. According to estimates by the public prosecutor's office, the evaded income tax amounts to around 3.5 million.
But the investigative front is much broader. Prosecutors are trying to reconstruct Marella's assets as much as possible to understand whether and how much taxes he should have paid.
For her part, Margherita is confident that the outcome of the investigation will strengthen her position in the ongoing civil proceedings in Switzerland and Turin.
It is the Turin prosecutor's office itself that points out that the entire matter is not only “particularly complex” but also characterized by “obvious anomalies”. There is “the somewhat apocryphal nature – as we read in the decree – of the signatures attributable to Marella in some important documents”. There is the likely existence of “other income-producing assets from Gianni Agnelli’s legacy held in tax havens by third-party companies such as Bundeena Consulting.” And then there are the “apparent anomalies” surrounding the Dicembre property, the Agnelli family’s historic vault.
The decree signed by the Public Prosecutor's Office states that the update of the shareholder structure was carried out “irregularly” and after years through a declaration of 2021 that included an “uncertified private deed from 2004” with which Marella retained the bare ownership the shares to John, Ginevra and transferred to Lapo Elkann.
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