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“Married to the Mob: The diamond boer and the honeytrap” – Louis Lieberman - Part 7

https://mg.co.za/article/2015-04-16-married-to-the-mob-the-diamond-boer-and-the-honeytrap/
16 Apr 2015

Inside the Palazzolo empire

In Italy, after a Mafia boss gets convicted, the authorities trace and seize his assets because the only way to really have an effect on mafias is by getting at the money.

In the case of Vito Roberto Palazzolo, the task is particularly difficult.

He sits on an empire of diamonds, luxurious properties and billions stashed offshore.

And he has an army of proxies securing all assets from confiscation. These assets have been mapped for the first time in new research by a group of European and African investigative centres.

The picture that emerges, once the web is untangled, is of a thriving empire. Property owned or controlled by Palazzolo is typically owned by companies in countries such as South Africa and Namibia, with those companies in turn owned by trusts or offshore entities.

Through various mechanisms Palazzolo, his family and individuals that Italian police consider his proxies can be shown to control or to have previously controlled four farms in Namibia (totalling some 34 000 hectares worth about R24-million) and a web of 46 companies that control 70 properties worth just shy of R500-million.

The South African properties include:

•	A Plettenberg Bay stud farm;
•	The La Terra de Luc estate in Franschhoek, where La Vie de Luc branded spring water is bottled;
•	The San Michele villa in Bantry Bay;
•	Apartments on Cape Town’s V&A Waterfront, complete with private docks for yachts; and
•	Properties on Shortmarket Square, a stone’s throw away from Parliament.

--The heart of the Palazzolo empire lies in the secretive corporate jurisdiction of the British Virgin Islands.--

--Through five innocuously named companies registered there, Palazzolo obtained shares (since sold) in the largest diamond mine in Russia and controls Avila and Marbella, two Namibian diamond-cutting companies headed by his sons and his Namibian partner, a sightholder in De Beers and a son of a Namibian leader.-- – Additional reporting by John Grobler, Khadija Sharife and Craig Shaw. Data analysis by Stefano Gurciullo