FLORENCE – The father of former Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, under house arrest for fraudulent bankruptcy and falsification of invoices, has broken his silence saying he is innocent of the charges. 

 In a Facebook post, Tiziano Renzi wrote - "I will face the trial in the courtroom as a citizen who has been pre-emptively massacred in the media, but also as a citizen with no criminal record who asserts his innocence," he wrote. "I have never issued false invoices ... I have not gone bankrupt, we don't have workers off the books.
 "I say here (and unfortunately at the moment I can only do so here) that these reconstructions are FALSE.”

 Sixty-five invoices for non-existent or inflated transactions totaling almost 725,000 euros had been issued by a fake company run by the parents of Matteo Renzi, according to investigators.

 Tiziano Renzi and Laura Bovoli were considered “de facto administrators” of various cooperatives headed by often unsuspecting frontmen.

 Established in 2013, fake coop Marmodiv became, in a short time, the “largest provider of services in Florence for ‘Events 6”, the leading company among those tied to the Renzis.

 According to Public Prosecutors Christine Von Borries and Luca Turco, Marmodiv was set up “essentially to allow ‘Events 6’ to have employees available without having to bear the costs related to the fulfillment of social security and tax burdens,” all transferred to the cooperative itself, then bankrupted as happened with other coops, Delivery Service and Europe Service.

 The prosecution’s re-creation stated, “the cooperatives would have succeeded each other over time, while maintaining the same employees and the same customers.” It is the “modus operandi” of the Renzis, read the order, to have “manpower” without the lead company being “burdened by social security and tax obligations.”

 Of 18 suspects, three arrests have been made – including Ligurian entrepreneur Mariano Massone (along with Renzi’s parents) for alleged crimes committed between 2010 and 2018. 

 The trio will be interrogated on Monday.