Shares worth €1.3bn (£1.1bn; $1.5bn) have been seized from the company that controls the manufacturer of Campari over alleged tax evasion, Italian police have said.
Officials ordered the confiscation of the Campari Group shares from Luxembourg-based Lagfin as part of a year-long investigation into how it absorbed its Italian arm.
It is accused of failing to pay a similar figure to that of the shares seized in taxes during that merger. The company said it had always acted according to tax laws.
Campari – which also produces alcohol brands including Aperol, Grand Marnier and Courvoisier – said neither it nor its subsidiaries were involved in the case.
However, chair Luca Garavoglia is among those under investigation, local media reports.
Lagfin – which owns more than 50% of Campari shares and has 80% of voting rights – told the BBC in a statement that it had “always acted in the most scrupulous respect of any applicable laws and regulations, including any Italian tax laws”.
Prosecutors in Milan launched a probe into the company last year. Financial police said on Friday that they allegedly found €5.3bn of undeclared capital gains between 2018 and 2020 on which it had not paid a so-called “exit tax”, levied on firms that transfer their headquarters abroad.
It is also accused of transferring its Italian assets into foreign ownership solely for tax purposes, according to Italian financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore.
Mr Garavoglia, the billionaire who inherited ownership of Campari from his late mother, is implicated alongside Giovanni Berto, the head of Campari’s Italian branch, local media reports.
Lagfin said it will “defend itself vigorously” in the matter, which it characterised as a “tax dispute”.
The company stressed that Campari had never been involved “in any manner whatsoever” in the matter, adding that, as it held 80% of Campari’s voting rights, the seizure was “absolutely unable to affect the position of Lagfin as controlling shareholder of Campari”.
One of the largest global producers of spirits, Campari is valued at around €7bn on the Milan Stock Exchange.
The company has its roots in 1860, when Gaspare Campari’s homemade bitter liqueur became a popular tipple among patrons of his Milan bar.
It became so successful that, in 1904, his family began manufacturing it commercially, and from the 1990s onwards the firm began acquiring other alcohol brands.
