The total value of the confiscated assets amounts to €4.5 million. After an eleven-year bureaucratic odyssey, the Guardia di Finanza (Italian Finance Police) has executed the definitive confiscation (decreed in 2018) of the assets attributable to Mario Pischedda, 64, a businessman implicated in the "Family Affairs" investigation launched in 2015. In May of that year, he and his wife were arrested for fraudulent bankruptcy involving a €12 million hole. The following month, Pischedda was served with a precautionary seizure order for his €4.5 million assets, which recently became state property. This preventive measure runs parallel to the bankruptcy proceedings.

The story

Cars, company shares, and financial assets, plus hotels, homes, and land between Tortolì and Olbia: all confiscated. Eleven years after the seizure, the assets worth over €4.5 million have reached their destination: the State. Thus, with the completion of the administrative formalities and the registration of the transfers in the public registers, the investigation conducted by the Guardia di Finanza (Fiamme Gialle) concludes. The last intervention in the case (a complex one) dates back to last July when, upon delegation from the Lanusei Court, officers from the Arbatax company regained control of the entire assets, conducting a new inspection of the assets and verifying the remaining requirements. This work involved documentation, searches, ownership, land registry data, property registers, judicial documents, and verifications of company assets and shareholdings. Not a new seizure, therefore, but the completion of a never-ending judicial and administrative process. Reconstructing the size and current location of the properties also required a physical survey of the area, conducted with the involvement of the Prefecture and the Police Headquarters, as part of the specific public order measures adopted between August 31st and September 1st. The final steps were carried out at the Revenue Agency of Nuoro and Tempio and at the ACI (Italian Automobile Club). The difference this time is substantial: after years of administration under the procedure, the process concludes with the acquisition of the properties as state property.

The defense

Pischedda's lawyers are announcing a battle. "We have filed an appeal with the Rome Court of Appeal to overturn the order," says Aldo Niccolini, the entrepreneur's lawyer. Niccolini recently secured the acquittal of the director of the companies attributable to Pischedda ("because the crime was not proven") by the Supreme Court (overturning the two previous first- and second-instance rulings). "In light of the acquittal of the director," adds Mario Solanas, another lawyer for Pischedda, "we are preparing a further appeal regarding another portion of the assets."

Roberto Secci

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