Italy's top court acquits ex Monte Paschi execs in derivative case
29/05/2019 18:17
ROME, May 29 (Reuters) - Italy's Supreme Court acquitted
three former managers at bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena
BMPS.MI who had been accused of misleading authorities in
relation to a 2009 derivative trade that prosecutors said was
used to conceal losses.
The Tuscan bank was bailed out by the state in 2017 under an
8 billion euro rescue plan which handed Rome 68 percent of the
world's oldest lender.
Former chairman Giuseppe Mussari, ex-chief executive Antonio
Vigni and one-time finance boss Gianluca Baldassari had already
been acquitted by a court of appeal in December 2017. That
verdict was upheld by the Supreme Court on Wednesday, whose
decision cannot be appealed.
The first-grade ruling by a court in Siena, home town of
Italy's fourth-biggest lender, in October 2014 had called for
jail terms of three years and six months for each of the men,
for allegedly hiding a document relating to the transaction with
Japanese bank Nomura.
Defence lawyers have said that regulators had access to all
the necessary information to understand the scope of the
operation.
A separate, higher-profile trial against the same defendants
and former employees at Nomura and Deutsche Bank for alleged
false accounting, market manipulation and misleading regulators
is ongoing in Milan. urn:newsml:reuters.com:*:nS8N22Q09D
(Reporting by Domenico Lusi; writing by Emilio Parodi; editing
by David Evans)