He purchased the painting at auction and requested trial for Sgarbi for tax crimes. The Rome Prosecutor’s Office has requested the indictment of the former undersecretary of Culture Vittorio Sgarbi for fraudulent evasion of tax payments.
Debts that the art critic has with the Revenue Agency for a total of approximately 715 thousand euros. “It’s something inexplicable, which has no meaning, totally senseless. I paid taxes, I didn’t divert any financing from taxes and that money wasn’t mine but belonged to a gentleman, a banker, who gave that painting to my girlfriend” , says Sgarbi from Trento on the sidelines of the agreement for development and cohesion between the Government and the Autonomous Province of Trento.
The mystery of the painting by Vittorio Sgarbi: the ministry has renounced the purchase of the work, the Finance investigates
by Giuseppe Scarpa
The prosecutors accuse Sgarbi of having acquired a painting in 2020 at auction by making a fool of himself the partner as buyer and with money from a third person, his partner, with the intention of protecting the work from possible attacks by the tax authorities. The former undersecretary of culture is accused of violating article 11 of the law on tax crimes on fraudulent evasion of tax payments.
The story and the 2020 auction
The case revolves around a painting from the early twentieth century. In October 2020, Sabrina Collethe politician’s partner wins in an auction The fairy gardenof the teacher Vittorio Zecchin.
In essence, Colle would have acted – according to the economic and financial police unit of the Rome financial police – on behalf of Sgarbi.
All this to avoid taxes. The undersecretary had a series of debts with the treasury and would have preferred not to have this work of art registered in his name, this is the thesis. Therefore, for the prosecutor’s office, the real buyer was the politician.
Sgarbi owes 700 thousand euros to the tax authorities, the ‘Fairy Garden’ bought by his partner to evade taxes: “I pay everything”
by Giuseppe Scarpa
Last October, when the news of the investigation was announced, Sgarbi explained that it was a “sequence of lies” which caused “serious reputational damage to me and to all the other subjects mentioned, associating them with hypotheses of crime which, as they are based on false assumptions, they constitute a serious slander for which, now, a report to the Public Prosecutor’s Office will also be necessary”.
Shortly afterwards, however, the art critic informed the investigators that he wanted to settle the outstanding accounts with the revenue agency.
“The request for indictment by the Rome prosecutor’s office is unfounded and without merit. The fraudulent conduct alleged against Sgarbi is disavowed by the facts, considering that he is (and at the time of the crime was) paying the taxes through the balance of the installments of the ter and quater scrapping”, says the lawyer Giampaolo Cicconi, lawyer of the former undersecretary. “The alleged fraudulent conduct – continues the lawyer – cannot be hypothesized due to the absence of the so-called specific intent envisaged by the law. Finally, at the time of the event, Sgarbi’s assets were significantly higher than the tax debt”, concludes Cicconi.
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– 2024-04-13 10:18:29
