Italy risks losing direct control over Luxottica to France. But perhaps this is right: from a European or Atlantic perspective, for the good of the multinational eyewear company. One hundred billion in value of shares on the Paris Stock Exchange. A turnover of 25 billion in 2023, growing by over 7 percent. A staff which, according to what the company declares, reaches 190 thousand employees worldwide, of which 15 thousand in Italy.

The investigation by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has not in the least affected the balance that supports the group’s success. Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio, 28 years old, one of the founder’s sons, finds himself under investigation on charges of having benefited from the dossiers of the Equalize agency of Carmine Gallo, 66 years old, and Samuele Calamucci, 45. Especially with regards to the alleged monitoring his wife, the American model Jessica Serfaty, and some family members who are competing for the inheritance of his father Leonardo Del Vecchio, who died in 2022.

The future of 15 thousand jobs in Italy

The solidity of the group is such that, even in the days following the house arrest of Gallo and Calamucci, the shares continued to gain value. The upcoming operation is the entry into the ownership capital of EssilorLuxottica of Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta company, which could acquire 4-5 percent of the shares for a value of 5 billion. It is a further step, after the merger with the French Essilor, towards the internationalization of the group. But also a financial operation that would increase the resources to possibly review the internal balance between the members. The founder has in fact arranged for the shares of Delfin, the family safe based in Luxembourg, to be divided equally among his six children. And he reserved a significant recognition for his right-hand man, Francesco Milleri, current president and CEO of EssilorLuxottica, one of the architects of the brand’s success.

The investigations of the Milan and Rome Prosecutor’s Office, which is in turn investigating the Flower Squad, another group of alleged spies but this time within the institutions, will ascertain whether the young Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio and his legal advisor Vincenzo De Marzio, also under investigation, were fully aware of the alleged crimes committed by Calamucci in the collection of information, or themselves victims of the fake Equalize dossiers: from the alleged abusive access to the State databases to the fabrication of real forgeries, such as the annotation of the New York police on the arrest (non-existent) with a transvestite of Leonardo’s brother Maria Del Vecchio, also an important shareholder of EssilorLuxottica.

Team Fiore, the investigation underway in Rome

During the uisjournal.com investigation into the Flower Team, revealed by Samuele Calamucci himself, he himself pushed for the publication of two mandate contracts and some signatures which attributed to important figures of the multinational eyewear company the order to file Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio , to discredit its reputation through disloyal state employees. uisjournal.com never published those documents, but handed them over to the Rome Prosecutor’s Office. Lacking certain certification of their origin, they did not comply with the minimum authenticity criteria established by our editorial team.

If these were real contracts, the circumstance – which only the judicial authority can verify – would be extremely serious. However, if it involves further falsification of documents, the authors will also have to deal with the law firms that assist EssilorLuxottica shareholders. In other words, the clandestine network of Squadra Fiore probably exists, but its intervention in the inheritance dispute between the Del Vecchios remains to be verified.

Ciccio and Rosario, what the wiretap reveals

The existence would be confirmed by an interception, listened to by the carabinieri at an unsuspecting time on 22 October 2023, in which one of Calamucci’s interlocutors says: “But what did Ciccio say, that he was procuring the material on Monday?”. And the IT consultant from Equalize replies: “That was already started this morning… even if I later understood, maybe he already agreed a little with Rosario”. Ciccio and Rosario, again according to Calamucci’s subsequent testimony to uisjournal.com, would be two members of the Flower Team.

Read all the uisjournal.com investigations on Squadra Fiore – by Fabrizio Gatti

The intermediation between Equalize and EssilorLuxottica was provided by Vincenzo De Marzio, one of Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio’s most trusted consultants. Former lieutenant of the Carabinieri ROS, De Marzio collaborated with the office of the then anti-mafia prosecutor of Milan, Armando Spataro, and was one of the prosecution witnesses in the trial against the agents of the SISMI and the CIA, the Italian secret services and Americans, for the kidnapping of Imam Abu Omar which also took place in Milan in 2003.

The legal team with Julian Assange’s lawyer

With his consultancy firm, De Marzio today works for some important law firms. In 2020 he collaborated with the legal team in London of lawyer Ben Emmerson, then Queen’s Counsel and former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and Counter-Terrorism, as well as defender of Julian Assange. The aim of the collaboration was to gather Syrian refugee families to launch a collective legal action against Qatari entrepreneurs and banks accused of financing the Islamic State in Syria. And caused the flight of millions of civilians.

The team also included lawyers from a law firm with offices in London and Israel. Perhaps it is them that Calamucci refers to in the interceptions, when he mistakes them for secret agents of the Mossad. The latest collaboration concerned a compensation case against alleged Italian companies that supplied materials and technology, with which Hamas built the tunnels for the attack on 7 October 2023. The legal investigation is reportedly still ongoing.

Read all the uisjournal.com investigations on Squadra Fiore – by Fabrizio Gatti

The possible exit of EssilorLuxottica from the Italian orbit could lead to the transfer of the production center of gravity abroad in the future. Just as happened with the merger of Fiat into Stellantis. This is probably good for the commercial success of the multinational. But it is a further alarm bell for Giorgia Meloni’s government, which is very busy in these hours on the fate of a few refugees whether or not to be sent to Albania.

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