The Menarini Pharmaceutical Group makes peace with the taxman. After the announcement, on 29 June, of the decision of the patron Alberto Aleotti to close his personal dispute by paying 324 million euros, today the adhesion of the companies of the group was confirmed, from which another 48 million will arrive. In all, the Revenue Agency will collect 372 million euros (over 700 billion lire) plus 12% of taxes on the profits that the company has made by investing the money hidden from the tax authorities. In December, Alberto Aleotti had received a "report of assessment" of over three billion for unpaid taxes, fines and related interest. Now the Revenue Agency specifies that the higher taxes evaded ascertained amount to approximately 500 million euros, plus penalties and interest. The agreement is therefore considered very satisfactory.
"The matter in question - declared Luigi Magistro, Central Director of Assessment of the Revenue Agency - represents the most relevant case of international tax evasion ever dealt with, the positive outcome of which for the Treasury was favored by recent regulatory interventions on the fight against these forms of evasion": in particular, the presumption that capital held abroad and not declared constitutes, unless proven otherwise, income not taxed in Italy.
The Florence public prosecutor's office — which accuses Alberto Aleotti of a colossal fraud on the prices of active ingredients (the raw materials of drugs) and the pharmaceutical group's top management of criminal association, money laundering and tax fraud, and which last November obtained a seizure "for the equivalent" of assets amounting to one billion and 200 million — has been an active part in the negotiations with the tax authorities and has already released a part of the seized assets equal to the amount that Alberto Aleotti undertook to pay to the taxman. The investigation into Menarini is a clear case in which justice is not a cost but a resource. With this investigation he made the State recover the very significant sum of 372 million euros, corresponding to about one hundred times the amount of the annual costs of justice (wiretapping, consultancy, interpreters and other) of the prosecutor's office itself.
07 July 2011 – WILD FRANCA
