The Public Prosecutor's Office of Rimini has placed the Grand Hotel of Riccione under criminal seizure and has investigated former administrator Gianni Andreatta and several associates and figureheads for fraudulent bankruptcy. Financial police officers from the Rimini provincial command executed an urgent preventive seizure order covering real estate, financial assets and company shares with a total value of 29 million euros. This morning, when the Guardia di Finanza entered the Grand Hotel, there were — in addition to Andreatta, who lives there — several tourists.
Searches were then carried out both at the Grand Hotel, with the assistance of a cash dog — a dog trained to detect cash — and at properties in the provinces of Rimini, Milan, Monza-Brianza and Bari. Six people in total are under investigation for multiple counts of fraudulent bankruptcy, among them Andreatta himself, formally resident in Cuba but domiciled in Riccione, considered the "dominus" of the entire operation. The management company of the Grand Hotel of Riccione, which has been bankrupt for years, should have handed over the property to the bankruptcy trustee appointed by the Court through its administrator Andreatta, but instead the facility allegedly continued to be run off the books; it is set to be auctioned on 23 September next, apparently for 24 million euros. The hotel, completely non-compliant with regulations and despite the revocation of its licences, continued its commercial operations with revenues predominantly undeclared.
The Grand Hotel of Riccione was inaugurated on 15 August 1929 and built in just one hundred days to a design by architect Rutilio Ceccolini, commissioned by entrepreneur Gaetano Ceschina, and soon became a symbol of high society during the Fascist era. Andreatta took over the management of the Grand Hotel following the death of the widow of one of the Ceschinas, whom he had assisted in her final years, and in 2023 the Court declared it bankrupt.
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