Luxury Hotels In San Diego|"UPDATE 2-Italian Police Seize"

Source         :     reuters.com
Category     :    Luxury Hotels In San Diego
By               :    reuters
Posted By   :    Hotels in Virginia Beach North Courtyard

Luxury Hotels In San Diego

Italy's tax police said they were seizing houses, hotels and other assets totalling 250 million euros ($336 million) as part of an investigation of alleged false accounting and market manipulation by the former owners of insurer Fondiaria-Sai. The investigation led last month to the arrest of Fondiaria's former owner Salvatore Ligresti, members of his family and various managers.

The arrests related to a 600 million-euro hole found in the group's claims reserves which had not been disclosed to the market, police said at the time. Police said in a statement on Monday that the alleged crimes resulted in illicit profits of 251.6 million euros, prompting the confiscation of assets worth an equivalent amount across 25 Italian regions. They said the seizures included the Ligresti family's Milanese estate, along with upscale hotels they own in Turin, Sicily and the mountainous Dolomite region. "We believe this seizure is totally unjustified," Salvatore Ligresti's lawyer Gianluigi Tizzoni told Sky Tg24 channel.

No one at Fondiaria was immediately available for comment, while lawyers for Jonella Ligresti, the daughter of Salvatore, said they would appeal against the move. All those accused in the case have denied any wrongdoing. Fondiaria's position as Italy's leading motor insurer has been hit by growing competition and a drop in the number of people buying car insurance during the country's longest post-war recession.Rival insurer Unipol agreed last year to rescue Fondiaria in a complex takeover deal, effectively ousting the once powerful Ligresti family from the company it had controlled. The tie-up with Unipol is expected to be completed by the end of the year. The chief executive of Italy's largest bank Unicredit, which is the biggest creditor of Fondiaria and the Ligresti's holding company Premafin, said in July the arrests would not affect the deal.

Source : reuters.com/article/2013/08/12/fondiariasai-investigation-idUSL6N0GD10A20130812