Over two million euros. This is the amount seized by the Milan Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Auditors from the Italian Wine Union. The company, one of the best known in the wine industry with 709 member companies representing more than 150,000 winemakers, more than 50 percent of Italian wine turnover and more than 85 percent of wine export turnover, had received European funds for the "Native grapes academy" project to strengthen the competitiveness of the European agricultural sector. According to the prosecution, the intent of the cooperative under investigation was to hoard European funds created to promote agricultural production.

According to the Regional Public Prosecutor's Office of the Corte di Conti and the European Public Prosecutor's Office, which cooperated in the case, the company allegedly organized false tenders and concealed conflicts of interest with Veronafiere, the entity that organizes Vinitaly, in order to grab a large European public funding created to promote Italian and European agricultural products. The Regional Public Prosecutor's Office of the Court of Auditors explains that the company, in the face of the seizure and the related invitation to provide deductions, while not making "admissions of responsibility", fully compensated the "damaged European Commission Agency".

The incriminated project was called "Native grapes academy" and, last September, was aimed at strengthening the "promotion of agricultural products, in the internal market and third countries". According to investigators' assumptions, the fraud was pursued in two ways. The National Wine Union allegedly identified Veronafiere as the company to execute the European project through a "mere facade" tender, organized only to hide from European bodies a pre-existing conflict of interest between the two companies. Then, the two companies would enter into a service contract intended to hide the fact that, by awarding the contract to Veronafiere, 35 percent of the sum paid actually reverted to the National Wine Union. Also according to the investigators, the erarial damage, that is, the damage to public funds, was quantified at 2,085,810 euros: hence the seizure of the entire sum was ordered, which, for its part, Uiv would return today.

This was announced by the consortium's spokespersons through a note released in the afternoon: the group, by the way, complains that it has not been heard by the Court of Auditors for Lombardy, which materially provided for the precautionary seizure of the sum. In addition, Uiv swears to the regularity of the procedure followed to obtain the funds.
"Unione Italiana Vini Servizi -reads the note- represents that, following the precautionary initiative promoted by the regional prosecutor's office at the Court of Auditors of the Lombardy Region, a seizure order equal to the amount of the contribution received, has matured the will to return to the European Agency Rea the entire amount of said contribution, in good part, moreover, never used by the company".

The preservation order concerns a sum of 2,085,810 euros, and the decision to return the money, UIV clarify, is to be considered an act carried out "exclusively out of a spirit of loyal cooperation and respect towards the proceeding judicial authorities and the European Agency itself" given the different assessment by Rea regarding its legitimacy. This even though, the note continues, the agency had been "consulted during the complex procedure for the granting of the incentive measure, regarding the existence of the requirements for the recognition of the contribution". 

Unione Italiana Vini, in the conclusion of the note, stresses that the decision to return the contribution "does not in any way amount to an admission of responsibility with respect to the disputed hypotheses, on the part of Unione Italiana Vini, which, on the contrary, reaffirms the absolute legitimacy of the conduct held within the procedure for access to the funds provided by the European agency".