Italian police have confiscated the assets of the architect who designed "Putin's palace". He is suspected of tax evasion.

La Repubblica writes about it.

According to the publication, 63-year-old Lanfranco Cirillo did not declare an income of tens of millions of euros between 2013 and 2019. Law enforcement seized assets totaling £140 million, including a helicopter, luxury homes and large amounts of cash.

The investigations of the Brescia Economic-Financial Police Unit initially focus on a helicopter registered in Russia - for which the customs obligations had not been fulfilled - which revealed an alleged case of fictitious residence abroad. In particular, the professional is under investigation because he would not have declared an income of tens of millions of euros from 2013 to 2019 "while maintaining in Italy the center of his family, emotional and economic-patrimonial interests", according to the investigators. The investigation activities "focused on finding notable manifestations of wealth that were completely disproportionate to the declared taxable income, for which no adequate justifications were provided to ascertain their tax lawfulness".

Based on the evidence, the investigating judge ordered the preventive seizure due to disproportion. Among the assets seized were "luxurious homes, a helicopter, bank availability, cash, jewelry, works of modern and contemporary art by famous authors (paintings by Picasso, Cezanne, Kandinsky, De Chirico and Fontana, ed), as well as various other goods by luxury".

Cirillo, an architect from Brescia but who has moved to Dubai for some time, Lanfranco Cirillo, according to an investigation by the Navalnyj Anti-Corruption Foundation, has built "Putin's" pharaonic villa on the Black Sea, furnished with furniture from the most exclusive Italian companies and inspired by Berlusconi's Villa Certosa. In Moscow, he had opened and then closed the Masterskaya architecture studio. A year ago, he told Repubblica that he had "in addition to this residence of some importance in Brescia - a charming 15th-century villa renovated with modernist accents - I have a residence in Dubai, five villas on the Costa Smeralda, a beautiful house in Moscow and others in Madonna di Campiglio, New York", denying that he was rewarded for Putin's villa on the Black Sea with an adjacent one.

Putin's Palace - what is known

The Anti-Corruption Foundation of the Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny has published an investigation into the large-scale palace of President Vladimir Putin near Gelendzhik.

The FBK claims that the 68-hectare residence of the President of Russia on Cape Idokopas was built in 2010 and costs about a billion dollars. On its territory, there is an underground ice palace, a church, an 80-meter bridge "for approaching the tea house", a tunnel for descending from the palace to the sea.

According to the FBK, an offshore company sponsored the palace construction, where businessmen close to Putin "donated" money.