Italy tax police search legal firms in Agnelli inheritance probe
Adds comment of Elkanns' lawyers
MILAN, Nov 26 (Reuters) -Italian tax police have searched the offices of some legal firms as part of an investigation into alleged tax fraud involving five people, including Stellantis STLAM.MI and Ferrari RACE.MI Chair John Elkann, prosecutors said on Tuesday.
The investigation, opened earlier this year, alleges Elkann and his siblings Lapo and Ginevra did not pay taxes in Italy on assets they inherited after the death in 2019 of their grandmother Marella Caracciolo, the wife of late Fiat boss Gianni Agnelli.
The case stems from a wider inheritance dispute between the Elkanns and their mother Margherita over the estate of Gianni Agnelli, which has divided one of Italy's best known business dynasties. An Italian judge in September seized money and assets worth almost 75 million euros ($78.77 million) from the five people involved.
Prosecutors in Turin said in a statement on Tuesday thatthe searches were aimed at collecting documents for the probe, regardingtransfers of shares in Dicembre (December), the holding company owned by the three Elkann siblings at the top of the ownership structure of Exor EXOR.AS, the Agnelli family's investment firm.
In particular, prosecutors allege contracts regarding a 2004 transfer of a 40% stake in Dicembre from Marella Caracciolo to John, Lapo and Ginevra were "insufficient, altered or falsified" and that succession taxes were not paid.
The Elkanns' lawyers said in a statement the three sibling were not personally targeted by the tax police searches and that their clients reaffirmed that all their acts relating to Dicembre were legitimate.
"The current structure of Dicembre as well as the role held in it by John Elkann reflect the wishes of Gianni and Marella Agnelli, are supported by the entire family and cannot be changed by any legal action," they said.
As part of the wider probe, Turin's prosecutors said in September theirinvestigation showed that Caracciolo was a resident in Italy from at least 2010, and not Switzerland as claimed, and that her inheritance therefore should have been taxed in Italy.
The Elkanns' lawyers rebuttedthat Caracciolo had been resident in Switzerland since the early 1970s and that her will to reside in Switzerland had "never changed throughout her life".
Other people targeted by the seizure are John Elkann's accountant Gianluca Ferrero and Swiss notary Urs von Grunigen, who acted as estate executor.
($1 = 0.9522 euros)
Reporting by Emilio Parodi and Giulio Piovaccari; writing by Giulio Piovaccari, editing by Cristina Carlevaro and Gavin Jones
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