In Sardinia he is known for the "joke" negotiation on the sale of Cagliari Calcio: in 2014 he presented himself as a representative of phantom American buyers. In the Peninsula, more recently, he has been charged to get professionals, and others, to obtain loans linked to unspecified European tenders. Except that he pocketed the money, leaving his interlocutors dry-mouthed and with lightened pockets.

For this reason, at the beginning of the month , 52-year-old Luca Silvestrone, self-styled president of Confederimprese, was sentenced to one year and four months for the crime of fraud by the Court of Ravenna, his hometown.

According to what emerged from the investigation and during the trial, his victims are an accountant and the owner of a car dealership with his mother: four years ago Silvestrone had had a few thousand euros delivered in exchange for his services for the facilitation access to EU funds. But then it disappeared.

Thus the complaints were presented, which led to the trial and the first degree conviction. During the hearings it emerged that Confederimprese was a sort of "ghost": it doesn't even have a VAT number. It is in the accounts of the association that the money of the three scammed had been paid. And, it seems, not only theirs: in the trial it was discovered that there are other complaints against Silvestrone. The confirmation comes from the lawyer who represented him, ex officio, Michele Lombini: «I only learned at that time that other subjects had filed a complaint. And there's already a procedure in place," he explains.

However, the procedural events, for the fifty-two year old from Ravenna, are a minor problem compared to the drama that upset his life at the beginning of February: his brother Andrea, a tennis Paralympic, and his nephews Nicole and Brando, she is 14 and he is 8. they died in early February in a terrible accident on the A14. "They were coming to me, to surprise me," Luca Silvestrone said to the microphones of a local TV station.

Henry Fresu

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