Definitive confiscation of assets belonging to Marsala entrepreneur, has been ordered for tax evasion

 The definitive confiscation of assets, estimated at around 127 million euros, belonging to 60-year-old Marsala entrepreneur Michele Angelo Licata, has been ordered for tax evasion.

The measure encompasses restaurants, hotels, cars, lands, and bank accounts at the center of the intervention by the Court of Cassation, which rejected the appeal by the entrepreneur and his family against the verdict of the Palermo Court of Appeals. The Court of Appeals had confirmed the confiscation, except for some assets belonging to Licata's wife.

Michele Angelo Licata, known for his activities in the restaurant and hotel sector, had been the focus of a lengthy investigation by the Financial Police. He was definitively sentenced to two and a half years for tax fraud, acquitted of embezzlement, and the statute of limitations was declared for fraud against the State and all other charges up to the tax year 2010.

In the first instance, he had been sentenced to 4 years, 5 months, and 20 days in an expedited trial. According to the investigations, between 2006 and 2013, the Licata group would have evaded VAT and other taxes amounting to approximately 6-7 million euros. In the first instance, the Prevention Measures section of the Trapani Court had partially released some seized assets to the Licata family at the end of November 2015. However, in the second instance, the Court of Appeals largely accepted the prosecution's requests, confirming the "social dangerousness" of the entrepreneur and applying the preventive measure of special surveillance.

In late November 2015, investigators described Michele Licata as a "habitual socially dangerous tax evader." The mega-seizure, requested by then-Prosecutor of Marsala Alberto Di Pisa and substitute Antonella Trainito, was the most significant asset prevention measure for "fiscal dangerousness" at the national level. In another trial last January, the Palermo Court of Appeals confirmed his conviction to 5 years in prison for auto-money laundering.