Construction magnate Proietti pleads out in fraud case

(ANSA) - Rome, October 5 - Rome construction magnate Angelo Proietti plea bargained a three-year, three-month prison sentence Wednesday for draining 11 million euros from two companies, driving them bankrupt.
    Proietti, 61, was placed under house arrest on charges of aggravated bankruptcy fraud in May, when police also seized several accounts he held at the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), the Vatican bank.
    Investigators said Proietti drained 11 million euros from Edil Ars Srl, a building and art renovation contractor for several Vatican and Italian government bodies and agencies.
    These include the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA), the Vatican's LUMSA University and its Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital, Italy's culture and transport ministries, and the economy ministry's information technology firm SOGEI SpA.
    Edil Ars accumulated a lot of unpaid tax debt between 2007 and 2012, and was incorporated in May 2013 into another Proietti company called Emiroma Srl. Both companies ultimately went bust.
    Edil Ars is also known for renovating a luxury apartment in central Rome rented by Marco Milanese, a former MP in Silvio Berlusconi's now-defunct People of Freedom (PdL) party who was an aide to former economy minister Giulio Tremonti.
    Milanese in turn rented the flat out to Tremonti at far below-market prices, causing a scandal when news emerged that he was under investigation for graft and corruption.
    Milanese in 2013 was handed an eight-month suspended sentence for selling his yacht at an above-market price with the help of Fabrizio Testa, a former board member of civil air-traffic manager ENAV, in exchange for supporting Testa's bid to have his post renewed.
    In April this year, Milanese was sentenced to two and a half years for influence-peddling in Venice's MOSE flood-barrier project.