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Matthew Vella
Italian PM and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi is back in the spotlight of investigations by Milanese magistrates who are probing his 44 offshore companies spread around the entire globe, including Malta, which hosts subsidiaries of Berlusconi’s main holding company, Fininvest.
According to the accusations, between 1994 and 1995, Fininvest allegedly inflated the acquisition of film rights purchased in the USA by USD171 million, and then sold them again to two other holdings, Principal Network Communication and Principal Communication.
According to Il Corriere Della Sera, the two companies would be holding companies of two others in Malta.
A request for judiciary assistance has already been made to the authorities in Malta, Montecarlo, the UK, Bahamas, Guernsey and other countries which host Fininvest’s offshore subsidiaries.
Over the 90s, Berlusconi’s Fininvest amassed a considerable number of subsidiaries in Malta. According to a list of Fininvest’s offshore registrations issued by the Italian Ministry of Finance, two are still listed in Malta: News & Sport Time Ltd and Summercast International Ltd.
Lion Communication Ltd and European Communications Ltd are another two of Fininvest’s subsidiaries in Malta, both in dissolution.
The Italian Ministry of Finance also listed four other companies, which are no longer on the Maltese register of companies – Penta International, SB Communications, Scanemore Ltd, and Europa Agency.
The renewed investigations into Berlusconi’s offshore havens came to an end in February 2005, with the Italian PM being accused of having set up underground funds for the acquisition of television and film rights after 1993, when he left his business empire in the hands of his deputies to enter politics.
Berlusconi will have to answer for the misappropriation of USD276 million, 13 million Swiss francs, two million old French francs, nine million in Italian lire, and 548,000 Dutch florins.
Also implicated in the investigations is David Mills, husband to British secretary of culture Tessa Jowell, and a pillar of the New Labour establishment according to The Observer.
Mills devised the system to spread Berlusconi’s interests across the globe in a network of offshore companies in tax havens.
Mills is suspected of potential complicity in the alleged multi-million pound tax evasion and money laundering scandal.
Mills’s connections with the media magnate span over two decades, for years having helped Berlusconi avoid tax by setting up offshore companies.
Mills, a corporate lawyer, played an important part in helping Berlusconi skirt round Italian legislation when in 1990 a law was passed making it illegal for an Italian citizen to own more than three TV channels, in an attempt to curb Berlusconi’s media stranglehold.
At the time Berlusconi owned six channels so Mills helped design an elaborate network of “secretive offshore companies that allowed the media magnate indirectly to keep control of his media empire”, according to reports in the Italian press.
At one stage, Mills became a beneficial owner of one of Berlusconi’s Italian TV channels through another British Virgin Islands company called Horizon, enabling Berlusconi to legally claim the channel was separate from him. When this Italian channel was eventually sold, Mills’s law firm pocketed a GBP two million profit.
The investigations were re-opened following a probe into the banking documents of two British Virgin Island companies, Century One and Universal One. Both were used by Berlusconi to buy film rights and then sell them on to Mediaset, Berlusconi’s Italian media empire.
Milanese magistrates are focusing on payments that flowed in and out of these companies’ accounts at Banca della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Switzerland. In particular, investigators are puzzled over the whereabouts of EUR51 million in cash that was removed from these accounts but has not been found.
matthew@newsworksltd.com
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