Marco Ferrero approached the firm — accountants and tax advisers — six weeks ago. He wants his personal Maltese tax compliance handled, and advice on the purchase of a seafront apartment in Sliema for €1,350,000. Onboarding is not finished. No engagement letter has been signed, and the preliminary agreement on the apartment is due to be signed in three weeks.
- Client: Marco Ferrero, an Italian national born in 1974, resident in Malta since March 2023. Introduced by Anna Sciberras, an architect and a client of the firm for eleven years.
- Identity: a valid Italian passport, certified; a Maltese residence card; and a utility bill in his name at a Gzira address. Nothing on identification or verification is outstanding.
- Screening: no sanctions match, no PEP result and no adverse media, on the initial search and on a repeat run last week
- The purchase: €1,350,000, no mortgage. A €10,000 reservation fee has been paid to the estate agent.
- Source of wealth, as first given: the sale in 2021 of his 40% holding in Ferrero Logistica S.r.l., a Turin haulage business founded by his father, for €2,600,000. He supplied an unsigned, undated PDF headed as a share purchase agreement.
- The register: the Italian business register records Ferrero Logistica S.r.l. as struck off in 2019. The shareholders recorded at dissolution are his father and one unrelated individual; Marco Ferrero does not appear as a holder at any point.
- His response: put to him, he said the shares were “held for him by a friend” and that the 2021 sale was of the lorries rather than of shares, and that the paperwork is with his accountant in Turin. Four weeks on, nothing has arrived.
- A second explanation: he then offered a different one — the purchase money is an interest-free loan from his father — and supplied a one-page agreement dated three days ago for €1,400,000, with no repayment date. There is nothing on his father’s means.
- Source of funds: a Maltese bank statement showing €1,400,000 credited over six weeks in eleven transfers of between €90,000 and €150,000, from payment institutions in three countries, every one referenced “consultancy”. His Italian tax returns for 2021 to 2024, which he supplied himself, show employment income of about €38,000 a year and no consultancy.
- Position of the firm: no engagement letter, no fees received, and none of his money has passed through the firm at any point