SIENA — The ex-president of the Tuscan bank Monte Paschi di Siena, Alessandro Profumo, and current CEO Fabrizio Viola are under investigation by Siena’s Public Prosecutor’s Office under suspicions of market manipulation and false accounting.

 At the start of July, Sienese officials sent the legal dossier to the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan, this being more territorially competent to deal with the most serious accusation brought against the bank, that of manipulating the markets. 

 The bank has rejected every charge made against it and stresses that Sienese magistrates are acting only “out of formality.”

 Investigations started in 2015, following a few discoveries brought to light by minor shareholders, councillors and various consumer’s associations. The theory, according to magistrates, is that the bank’s accounts ranging from 2011 to 2014 misrepresented its Alexandria assets, claiming them as bonds rather than derivatives.

“Magristrates in Siena, who decided not to archive the investigations and to transfer the dossier to Milan, clearly maintain that it was the bank’s administrative body that was responsible for the misrepresentation of Alexandria assets in the years 2011-2014,” said a source closely involved in the case.

 Milanese officials now have another 18 months to decide whether Profumo and Viola should be put on trial.

 Earlier this year, several members of the bank’s governing body were sent to trial surrounding their dealings with Deutsche Bank and Nomura. 

lej