Matthew Vella Italy’s highest court has confirmed a three-year, eight months’ prison sentence for Francesco Cardella, founder of drug rehab community Saman, for misappropriating funds intended for his organization.
Cardella – today a fugitive living in Nicaragua – used a network of Saman companies, one of which was based in Malta as an offshore company, to move funds he received from the Italian state from one country to the other.
Saman International Ltd is still on the Malta Financial Services Registry of Companies and its registered address is in Merchants Street, Valletta.
The only documentation available for Saman International is the memorandum of association, which every company is obliged to submit on registration.
According to the memorandum, Francesco Cardella owns 200 shares in the company while Elisabetta Roveri and Klara Hosszufalussy, both from Milan, own 150 shares each. Cardella is also identified as the first director of the offshore company.
The company was set up to deal in the purchase, charter, hire or exchange of ships, yachts and boats. It also had the intention of acting as a broker and agent for maritime activity.
The investigations into Cardella’s misdeeds kicked off in 1995 when an inquiry was launched into a number of false courses offered by Saman, which were financed by Regione Siciliana. The investigations revealed that Cardella channelled the wealth into offshore companies, one of which was established in Malta in March 1993.
In October 2000 Cardella was found guilty by the courts in Trapani, Sicily of misappropriating funds and was handed down a seven-year sentence, later reduced to three years and eight months.
According to Italian journalist Francesco Viviano, writing in La Repubblica in 2002, one of Cardella’s ships was berthed in Malta after the fugitive established his Malta company to hide his wealth.
Cardella was a very close friend of disgraced former Socialist prime minister Bettino Craxi, who in 1994 exiled himself to Tunisia following the Tangentopoli (‘bribesville’) investigations that brought down the Italian political system.
The Saman guru, as Cardella is known, was also a witness at the wedding of Bobo Craxi, Bettino’s son.
Cardella had also offered his luxurious Bentley car for Craxi’s electoral campaigns and it is understood that when Cardella escaped from Italy in 1995, his first stopover was Hammamet in Tunisia, hosted by Craxi.
Magisterial investigations into the workings of the Saman community revealed that it had allowed Cardella to personally acquire luxurious properties and goods, which included an aeroplane, two ships, a sailing boat and vast amounts of money stashed away in current accounts. It is believed that he even owns a noble’s palace in Malta.
The fugitive was also at the centre of an investigation by the Trapani police into the murder of journalist and sociologist Mauro Rostagno in September 1988. The murdered journalist was one of the founders of the Saman community along with Cardella and Chicca Roveri. The three had returned to Italy from India in 1981 and inspired by the oriental philosophy of Indian spiritual guru Bagwan Rajneesh they set up the first orange-clad community in Italy.
The community eventually transformed itself into a rehabilitation centre for drug and alcohol addicts in 1984 and renamed it Saman. Rostagno was an outspoken journalist, who hit out against corrupt politicians and public officials as well as the strong Sicilian mafia.
At the time of his murder it was believed that Rostagno had very damaging information on a number of individuals.
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