ROME -- Former MP for the People of Freedom party, Amedeo Laboccetta, is among those arrested in the Italian capital under the investigation into a transnational criminal association between Italy and the Netherlands Antilles which laundered money worldwide and evaded taxes through online gambling and ‘video-lottery,’ equating to the sum of 85 million euros, police sources say.

 Also in handcuffs, Catanian entrepreneur Francesco Corallo, the so-called ‘Emperor of the slots’ who founded a casino in the Caribbean. Father and brother in law of the former President of the Chamber, Gianfranco Fini, Sergio and Giancarlo Tulliani, are further suspects. According to reports, over 10 are under suspicion in the ongoing case.

 In November 2011, Laboccetta, parliamentary and national coordinator of the PDL in Naples at the time, had opposed the confiscation of the private computer of Corallo, manager of the West Indies Company, claiming that the device contained materials concerning his parliamentary activities.

 Of the 85 million euros made to ‘disappear,’ 50 million would have flowed -- between 2004 and 2007, and then up until 2014 -- into Dutch, English and Low Country groups attributable to Corallo, circulating offshore societies to Saint Maarten.

 Chief prosecutor, Giuseppe Pignatone, said of the case, “We are currently in the presence of a gigantic activity of fiscal evasion, a swirling whirlwind of money which arrives from overseas to be recycled.”

 The investigation surrounds Atlantis, the casino established by Corallo in 2004.

 The investigating magistrate Simonetta d’Alessandro has stated, according to Roman daily Il Messaggero, “There are numerous grave pieces of evidence which demonstrate how Francesco Corallo has built an economic empire exploiting the position of the public concession of the game.”

 All there on the personal computer of the ‘Slot Emperor,’ the facts are clear for all to see. An ‘ad-hoc’ decree with the complicity of politicians, affairs managed by criminal associations and the famous house of Montecarlo belonging to Alleanza.

 sw