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AN ITALIAN COURT has sentenced fashion house duo Dolce & Gabbana to one year and eight months in prison for tax evasion of €200 million. were also ordered by the court in Milan to pay a fine of €500,000 to Italy’s national tax agency.
Lawyers for Dolce and Gabbana, whose celebrity clients include Beyonce and Madonna, immediately said they will appeal, and under Italian law the sentence will be suspended in the meantime.
Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were accused of having transferred control of their brands to a shell company in Luxembourg in 2004 and 2005 to avoid paying Italian taxes.
Prosecutors had argued that setting up the Luxembourg company Gado – an acronym of the surnames of the two designers – while the company was operating out of Italy was a bid to defraud the state.
They had called in May for the pair to be sent down for two years and six months.
In her closing speech at the trial, prosecutor Laura Pedio said there was “rock-solid proof” that the duo had committed “sophisticated tax fraud”.
She said Gado was “a sort of cloud with the consistency of gas,” while fellow prosecutor Gaetano Ruta said it was “an artificial construction the aim of which was to get a tax advantage”.
Although Dolce and Gabbana had originally been accused of tax evasion of around €1 billion, the court ruled that just €200 million of that sum was relevant.
Four other people, including Dolce’s brother Alfonso, were given suspended jail sentences.
Investigators completed a probe into the designers and five other people, in 2010 and the case was dismissed in April 2011 but reopened in November last year and went to trial.
“All that I care about is making clothes, that’s all. Let them do and say whatever they want,” Gabbana tweeted about the trial in April.
“To be accused of something that’s not true is not a pretty thing, but the heart of the matter is, who cares, we’ll all end up in the ground in the end,” he said.
Founded in 1985, Dolce & Gabbana employs more than 3,000 people and has 250 shops in 40 countries around the world.
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A shortage!?! Lettuce pray!
It’s ridiculous that Ireland can’t supply herself with salad and vegetables. The country has great land and weather for such produce. We should be easily self sufficient . We should be able to supply Europe too! The likes of Tesco Ireland should only sell home grown produce.
The weather is not right , 12 months of the year . We depend on Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere produce based on seasonality to supplement what we can produce.
@Niall O’Reilly:Try growing lettuce during wintertime in Ireland.
@Brian MacCarthaigh: No problem, its growing in the Botanical gardens in Dublin outside right now. Even easier in a tunnel.
@Colm Vambeck:- Correct. There are a lot of farmers in North County Dublin / Meath areas that grow lettuce through out the year. Then Keelings by the Airport have Gigantic greenhouses that grow peppers, lettuces, berries and all other types of veg you would think wouldn’t be plausible to grow in Ireland. They actually have an excellent Farm Shop at their entrance on the St. Margerets Road. (Finglas to Swords )
@The Viking:
Price……
There will always be a market for homegrown greenhouse vegetables and some people will pay a premium for them but the vast majority will buy the cheapest available.
Best of luck to the Keeling’s in their shop by the way.
Nonsense. We can grow everything in Ireland. You just need a greenhouse or a plastic tunnel. In Iceland they are self sufficient in tomatoes and cucumbers and my neighbor here in Brittany has 100 oranges on his orange tree in a climate often colder than Ireland!
Have you heard of a green house.?No problem at all under glass.
@Richard Paul: In a wee greenhouse (6 x 10) in the south of the country, we have all salad ingredients for our house all year around. We are still eating the spuds, carrots, parsnips and more from the wee veg plot. Hadn’t bought a spud in 5 years.
@ Paul Somers; Fair Play to you If it is practical for you to do that . But certain produce can not be grown in Ireland, in the quantities needed to satisfy the demand for them.
Sorry who buys more than one in one go?!
@Paul: People buying for a family.
@Paul:
Harvey the rabbit??
@Paul:
That new chain of shops, Chopped?
Be interesting to see what they substitute lettuce with now.
Restaurants, Pubs, Cafe’s
A number of local establishments purchase salad ingredients in Aldi / Lidi as the cost is sometimes below ‘Musgrave’s’ price point.
This is a great day for salad dodgers
Just have a bloody salad without lettuce. A salad with sausages and rashers and eggs and pudding. A salad with no salad.
Managed to buy some from a shady character on Moore street . Bit pricey though, €5 for a half dozen lettuce leaves and €7.50 for a reasonably sized courgette.
I’d say the Kinahans and the Hutches are repurposing the grow houses as we speak ….
RIP to all the poor slippy slugs
lettuce spray…
So busy giving out to super valu the farmers forgot about the poor oll lettuce
I blame vegetarians for eating all our side salads for their main courses.
Went to Supervalue, Tesco’s and Aldi looking for courgettes. Lidl is the only place you can get them.
Swear to God, I was blaming bloody operation transformation !
Woa muah gawd, cannot cope, like whats a B.L.T. without the L. :(
And I’m a vegan so no B either. :((
Didn’t take long for someone to announce they were vegan did it
Simply weather related.
Do we not grow it here?
Iceberg hopefully… its the marmite of lettii
@Hugh Gallagher: At least Jamie Oliver had the right idea with Iceburg lettuce…put them in a clay trap and blast them with No.7 shot. It’s a veg designed for supermarkets and catering due to lasting longer than most people who eat it.
Leaf it out will ye!
Ah..sure I can see it now “garda raid grow house..”(surely it’s herbal and illegal) ..garda looks sad and says “nah tis only lettuce..feck it”
Nothing of nutritional value in lettuce anyway
have your say