Loris Colusso , the Friulian accountant who became the main financial and tax consultant for much of the Italian business community, went missing five days ago and his body was discovered with the fish this morning in the River Danube near Gabcikovo dam, according to media reports.
According to reports from his daughter (who filed a missing person report to the Italian authorities a few days ago) and a close collaborator with his colleagues, they had been worried for days about his safety as he had claimed he was the target of a kidnapping.
Colusso’s consulting firm, Slovakia Group SrO has in fact operated as a “company house” for most of the NON-RESIDENT Italian entrepreneurs operating in Slovakia. A check on the register of online companies of the Slovak government in fact reveals hundreds of Slovak companies used for tax and administrative localization of Italian entities to be connected to Colusso, his direct collaborators or their offices, addresses and domiciles.
Its scope in the socio-economic context of reference is comparable to that of the Panama Papers study Mossak & Fonseca considering that the degree of perceived corruption and distrust in institutions recorded among Slovak citizens is the highest of all other member countries of the European Union.
Many of his customers, Italian owners of companies, small businesses and local firms, acquire subsidiary companies registered at the Ministry of Economy of Bratislava. A registered office, often shared with other companies, a service that Slovakia Group has offered for years, allows the Italian entrepreneur to drive a car with a license plate and insurance abroad, to invoice themselves or their most trusted friends for costs etc. without having employees on site and while benefiting from a much more advantageous tax regimen.
On closer inspection, some of Colusso’s customers turn out to be characters of a different caliber and more peculiar activities. if we want to limit ourselves to those already well-known, we first remember Mario Bertuccio, the king of VAT triangulations, Italy, Slovakia and the Czech Republic, owner of a controversial motorcycle team in Brno, ended up serving his guilt in the homelands of the host country.
Then there are emissaries of the “Trout”, Renzo Bossi, who repeatedly tried to undertake activities in the shadow of the Slovakian nuclear power plants owned by a company controlled by ENEL. Investigative findings of the GICO of the Guardia di Finanza seem to confirm that Colusso also acted as a consultant to Terra Real S.r.O. the company through which Antonino “Nino” Vadala ‘had imported 500 kilos of pure cocaine from South America into Italy. For this specific crime, Vadala (whose name our newspaper revealed following the murder of our Slovak colleague Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova) was sentenced in the first degree, while the scandal related to his attendance with top Institutions cost Slovakia a government crisis and the resignation of the powerful Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico.
As a reporter, in fact, I produced the procedural documents that report the text of an SMS in which Vadala boasts of his relations with the “Slovakian Chief of Cabinet”. Since Colusso is an influential “white collar” in the context of the Italian community in Slovakia, his activities have so far gone unnoticed. His online news portal allowed him not only to boast the title of journalist and to exercise influence on the local community, but even to accompany the correspondent of RAI, Maria Grazia Mazzola.
Considering the sad record of insecurity in the country, marred in recent years by corruption, robberies, institutional scandals and contracted murders (which currently make Slovakia one of the most dangerous places in Europe for the health of journalists beaten, killed or disappeared), we do not feel the need to exclude even the most ominous hypotheses on what could have happened to the Friulian accountant in the smell of ‘Ndrangheta.
It is certain that if Loris Colusso’s business activities were to be tracked as soon as possible, a vast and chaotic intertwining net of companies, characters and events, on which it is realistically impossible to draw simplistic conclusions, would have to be investigated.
As it is, Loris will be doing no more business after his body allegedly showed up near Gabcikovo this morning, five days after he went missing. The police investigation is underway.
