The Guardia di Finanza spotlight has shed light on nearly 150 real estate sales in the Costa Smeralda with transactions worth up to one billion euros coming from abroad. It is the balance sheet of an operation aimed at preventing money laundering, carried out by soldiers of the Sassari Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza, led by Colonel Stefano Repicheso.
And the investigations began from afar
It all started when the checks on Russian assets attributed to the “listed” persons began, that is, the checks that subsequently led to the freezing of the assets of the Russian oligarchs. During the investigative activity, financial officials identified “reference professionals” of those who made significant investments in Costa Smeralda, and conducted a series of checks on “financial intermediaries, professionals and other non-financial operators, selected on the basis of an approach based on the risk of introducing illicit assets into the legal economy.”
Wide range
The extensive surveillance activity has made it possible to identify people who have recently carried out a series of real estate transactions: from the sale to the rental of luxury goods in the Emerald area, an area which, as the prefecture’s leadership has confirmed, “is among the country’s most attractive areas for international investments of significant value.”
Slow in 150 trades
Under the lens of Fiamme Gialle, there are around 150 real estate transactions for financial transactions worth nearly a billion euros, mainly coming from abroad and from countries with preferential taxes “where offshore companies are often created to hide the beneficial owners of economic resources behind chains of control that at first glance seem obscure and complex”.
Administrative violations
“As a result of these checks, numerous administrative violations of anti-money laundering legislation were discovered related to the use of cash in amounts exceeding the limit established by law or the obligations to identify the customer and report suspicious transactions – the regional command further emphasizes -. The inspections revealed shortcomings in the non-compliance with the requirements related to adequate customer verification which expresses a necessary and fundamental fulfillment of the anti-money laundering cooperation system aimed at obtaining data and information not only formally but also in a more effective and dynamic sense in order to verify potential risks that could lead in a given circumstance to illicit behavior by knowing the source of the assets and funds used.”
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