The story of the account in the Bahamas of the president of Lombardy Attilio Fontana, which emerged following the investigations by the Milan prosecutor and the newspapers on the history of the lab coats ordered from his brother-in-law Andrea Dini’s company, is attracting more and more attention. It has become one of the strands of the magistrates’ investigation, the newspapers write, and has provoked some contradictory statements by Fontana, which have further complicated his position, already difficult for the disputed epidemic management from coronavirus and for the history of lab coats.
In particular, in the daily newsletter Tomorrow between 2009 and 2013 there are said to have been several large money movements on the account, which had been opened in 1997: interviewed by RepublicInstead, Fontana yesterday said that “it had been an account that had not been in operation for tens of years, I think at least since the mid-1980s”. A version incompatible with the opening date and recorded movements. In addition to these inconsistencies, he writes Tomorrow, the power of attorney is also focusing on the origin of the money on the account, initially over 5 million euros: Fontana says it is a legacy received from the parents, but many consider it implausible that that sum was accumulated only by his parents , a family doctor and a dentist.
The whole history of Fontana’s account emerged following another investigation: that of the Milan prosecutor’s office on medical gowns that in the midst of the epidemic the Lombardy Region ordered from Dama SpA, a clothing company owned by Fontana’s brother-in-law, Andrea Dini, and of which Fontana’s wife owns 10 percent. That supply, worth over 500 thousand euros, was reported in early June by Report, when it had now been transformed into a donation. It turned out, however, that a few days before it was transformed, Fontana had personally started the procedure for a 250 thousand euro transfer to Dama from the Swiss account.
Fontana’s version is that the supply had been decided without him knowing anything about it, and that when it had been reported to him, he had asked his brother-in-law to renounce it, by donating the lab coats, and providing to partially compensate him in person with the 250 thousand euros. But there are things that don’t come back here too: Fontana says he heard about the affair between 12 and 13 May, while the former director of the regional purchasing center and the commissioner Raffaele Cattaneo say they informed him earlier. Then there are about 25 thousand of the 75 thousand total lab coats that have never been delivered, and that indeed Dama had tried to sell elsewhere (at a higher price). This non-delivery is formally the reason why Fontana is being investigated for fraud in public supplies (yesterday the Guardia di Finanza searched the headquarters of Dama, seizing the lab coats).
But for some days, investigations, the newspapers write, have been focusing more and more on the history of the account in the Bahamas, whose existence emerged precisely because of the bank transfer attempted by Fontana. Created in 1997, it was made out to Fontana’s mother, the former dentist Maria Giovanna Brunella, then 74 years old, who had left the power of attorney – that is, the management – to her son, who had been mayor of Induno Olona for two years, in the province of Varese. In the interview with RepublicFontana denied that the parents evaded the tax department: «my dad was dependent on mutual insurance, my mother was a super-fifona, let alone escape. I really can’t tell you why they brought their savings out. “
In 2005, he wrote Tomorrow, the account opened in 1997 was transferred to another deposit in the Bahamas, in the name of Brunella and with Fontana indicated as beneficiary heir. In the following years there were large movements of money: deposits for 129 thousand euros in 2010, withdrawals for around 530 thousand in 2011, deposits for 400 thousand the following year. Movements that contradict the version according to which the account was not operational, and that have raised doubts about the possibility that Fontana’s mother, then more or less ninety years old, actually managed the account in the dark of her son in person.
In 2015 Fontana regularized that money using the tax shield, the amnesty for returning foreign capital hidden from the tax authorities without penalties with a voluntary declaration. However, they were not brought back to Italy, but to an account in Switzerland, where they are still deposited today. The procedure voluntary disclosure it is at the center of other doubts: on the one hand because its very existence seems to contradict Fontana’s version according to which that account did not serve to evade the tax authorities, on the other hand for the origin of the capital. Tomorrow writes that in the Revenue Agency documents certifying the return of capital with the tax shield there are recorded “non-fulfillment of tax monitoring obligations” for 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013.
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