Santanchè, the mysterious Negma fund that has come to save the minister’s companies and suspects of market manipulation

In the Santanchè affair between budgets that are not in order, unpaid employees and suppliers and small savers who have lost their investments, the Milan prosecutor’s office has now also turned the spotlight on the operations of the galaxy Visibilia with Negma: the Dubai-based investment fund that “lent” millions of euros to all three companies in difficulty of the Minister of Tourism, as well as Visibilia also Ki group And Bioerabut making significant capital gains. A fund which, according to a study by a financial consultancy firm, operated with a bond mechanism which contributed to lowering the value of the shares. The study is now on the table of the Guardia di Finanza, which in the Visibilia file has opened a Negma “file” to understand whether or not there are grounds for contesting the crime of insider trading and market manipulation.

In 2017, in a liquidity crisis, Visibilia turns to the fund Bracknor Capital Ltd driven by Abudi Gassam and signs a convertible bond with discounted shares. This loan in 2019 passes to the Negma fund, another financial venture based in Dubai that always sees Gassam among the representatives, this time with other Italian and French partners. The mechanism of these loans provides for loans in tranches. The first tranche is for 500 thousand euros: a few days after the loan, the Negma fund immediately asks for the shares in exchange, as per the contract, which it receives at a “discounted” price compared to the market value at that moment. He immediately puts them on the market and collects not only the 500,000 euros lent but on average records a capital gain of over 10 percent. Having done this operation several times, and always taking advantage of the increases in the share, in the end he obtains a capital gain of 600,000 euros plus a commission of 160,000.

In the meantime, however, to meet the demand for Negma shares, Visibilia itself issues new ones. But who buys these shares? According to a complaint filed by small shareholders in some cases the same Daniela Santanche with other companies in the Visibilia galaxy to still maintain control of the company. What is certain is that “over time the title Visibilia publisher spa has had a constant loss of value, just think that in the last year the loss was 89.6 per cent, in the last three years the loss was 99.5 per cent and in the last five years the loss was by 99.9 per cent”, reads a report from the Guardia di Finanza. The same mechanism was repeated in the other two Santanché companies, Ki group and Bioera, again with the Negma fund: in the first case, the shares then collapsed in value by 93.4 per cent (while the fund recorded a potential capital gain of around 30 percent).

The mystery remains as to who the investors of this fund are which, at best, arrived punctual as clockwork to save the Santanchè companies from bankruptcy, allowing for an improvement in the accounting situation: a situation which, according to an expert report requested by the Milan prosecutor , in Visibilia was very different from how it appeared amid bad loans, unrecorded capital losses and “fictitious capital gains”. In general, however, the study of the Ambromobiliare company advises against its customers, mostly small businesses, debenture loans of this type because in the controlled cases there have always been downward variations in the value of the security.

In the case of Negma, the Visibilia company has not even protected itself with a “lock up” clause: that is, the maintenance of the shares for a certain period in the event of conversion. In short, a fund that does not save, whose investors are unknown but which when it had to present a formal notice to the newspaper Milanotoday he had the lawyer sign it Ignazio Benito La Russa, now president of the Senate and authoritative member of the Brothers of Italy, the party of minister Daniela Santanchè. And there is another curiosity in this Visibilia story. Before being appointed minister Santanchè she sold several shares in Visibilia in favor of Luke Ruffino. The latter is a former secretary of the UDC in Milan acquitted in a trial in 2017 for alleged piloted contracts in the Aler public housing together with Marco Osnatoalso acquitted, now a deputy of the Brothers of Italy and then son-in-law of Romano LaRussathe brother of the president of the Senate.

The Santanché case should soon land in Parliament: the spotlight will be on the Senate where the conference of group leaders could schedule a report on the matter in the presence of the minister. This is formally requested by the Democratic Party, which however would like a timely response to questions and therefore a question time. The 5-stars will present a similar request to the Chamber.