Alessandro Profumo, Fabrizio Viola, and Paolo Salvadori have been acquitted on appeal in the trial for false accounting and market manipulation related to the Santorini and Alexandria derivatives.
The Court initially sentenced Profumo and Viola to 6 years in prison, Salvadori to 3 and a half years, and Monte Paschi bank to a fine of 800 thousand euros.
The acquittal was predictable after the previous acquittals of former president Giuseppe Mussari and former CEO Antonio Vigni, confirmed by the Supreme Court last October.
The top executives of Monte Paschi were accused of false accounting for accounting the same “errors” attributed to Mussari and Vigni even in the years following 2013.
The “errors” referred to the incorrect inclusion of the “Alexandria” and “Santorini” derivatives in the financial statements, hiding their volatile nature and the associated loss.
Other operations, such as Chianti Classico and Fresh, were included in the financial statements and were the subject of the main proceedings.
Profumo and Viola have always argued that an “addendum” attached to the financial statements explained and improved the understanding of the accounts, believing that it was not necessary to completely dismantle the financial statements of previous years.