Andria (BT): assets worth 80 million euros confiscated from a criminal entrepreneur

This morning the Carabinieri of the Provincial Command of Bari executed a decree with which the definitive confiscation of assets and financial resources worth approximately eighty million euros against the Andria-based entrepreneur MG.

According to the accusatory approach, the interested party (currently detained in the Bari prison) had accumulated immense capital – divided into real estate, corporate assets, luxury goods and various current accounts – as a result of its own illicit activity essentially linked to robberies of valuables, trucks and thefts from ATMs.

The asset investigations, started in December 2019 by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Trani, then in-depth by the Public Prosecutor's Office of Bari - which requested the seizure of the assets as well as followed all the subsequent phases - they allowed us to verify the purchases, company constitutions and financial movements of the interested party and his family over the last thirty years. The investigative activity highlighted not only thehigh risk of the proposal but also and above all the illicit origin of the capital, through which the 58-year-old convicted felon had managed to build his empire.

The assets, definitively removed from the availability of the interested party and his family, are in fact made up of 119 agricultural lands – for a total extension of over 530 hectares, 3 farms, 23 vehicles of which 6 cars (including a Porsche Panamera), various financial resources and 29 properties (apartments, villas, commercial premises, industrial warehouses), including both the immense car park in via Canosa 400 in Andria and the "Castle", i.e. the residential home which has become a symbol of the caliber of the interested party, which alone has a estimated value of approximately three million euros.

The provision was issued by the 2nd Criminal Section of the Supreme Court of Cassation which, deeming the appeal presented by Magno Giuseppe's defense inadmissible, fully accepted the proposal of the Public Prosecutor's Office of Trani, formulated on the basis of the asset investigations carried out by the Investigative Unit of Bari - Specialized section for the fight against illicit assets accumulated by crime, which reconstructed both the criminal career of the proposed person and the income of the entire family nucleus and provided a substantial circumstantial framework in order to the illicit origin of his wealth, accumulated over the last 30 years and which constitutes the compendium of serious crimes against property.

The very important result - the result of the synergy of intent between the judiciary and the investigative components - confirms the strategic importance of the fight against illicit assets accumulated by crime, both common and associative. The profits and wealth obtained through criminal trafficking, in fact, are constantly subtracted from the real economy through re-use operations in apparently legitimate activities.