Fictitious agreements and false contracts: this is how the Bio-on system worked

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A € 140 million 2017-2020 business plan based on alleged fictitious agreements. The 55 million Multi-license contract with a non-existent multinational company is the plastic example of how Bio-on spa has manipulated the market, re-launching false commercial agreements in which it was claimed to build plants between Europe and Asia to produce 100 thousand tons per year of bio plastic PHAs. In fact, however, there was no contract. But the operation had allowed the partners-directors Marco Astorri and Guido Cicognani, to pocket over 36 million euros.

Information that for the prosecutor's office in Bologna would have polluted the market, so that on the day of the announcement, on 22 December 2016, the stock registered a + 23.58%, with a volume of shares exchanged equal to 127 thousand 150. It was the effect positive of an alleged «system» devised by the top management of the listed company. One of all Astorri, patron of the company, under trial together with Cicognani, the right arm and the president of the board of auditors Gianfranco Capodaglio.

According to investigations by the Economic and Financial Police Department of Bologna, they are responding to false corporate communications and market manipulation. But the key to this alleged scam is found in company papers, which found strength in the press releases with which Astorri relaunched industrial plans without bases. From the fictitious Multi-license contract with a "prestigious" multinational, the manager announced, there is no trace. In fact, however, he had allowed the company to raise financial resources for about 41.5 million euros, without counting the 36 million forfeited, on a personal basis, from Astorri and Cicognani. An initiative that also had another effect: to make the 2016 budget go quietly, closed below expectations. Not only that, because in the wake of Astorri's glorious announcements the company had seen its net assets increase for a total of 27 million 711 thousand 573 euros, as emerges from the statement of the same Bio On of 16 May 2017, with a float equal to 36, 99% of the share capital. The investigators analyzed this last aspect, discovering that on the last day of the exercise period, the majority shareholders had sold 800 thousand warrants, making the float reach 36.99%. Otherwise, in fact, it would have been 34.19%, below the minimum threshold for access to the Star.

The mechanism to inflate the budgets put in place by Astorri and its partners also consisted in writing down the revenues linked to the sale of licenses and rights to exploit technologies to companies indicated as jointly controlled (joint ventures), but in the reality of subsidiaries: amounts that were entered as intra-group transfers and would have been canceled. This does not mean that the newco created by Bio-on in the different business segments were only fronts. This is the case of Sebiplast, the 2015 jv with Sadam (Seci-Maccaferri group). "The initial agreement with Bio-on for the production of levulinic acid from beet waste was shelved because it was not feasible and then replaced by the project for the production of bioplastic from glycerol (PHA) through the conversion of our former Eridania sugar refinery. San Quirico Trecasali (Parma). It is expected to reach 10,000 tons of biopolymers per year. The process up until last July was going ahead, even recently there have been meetings with Arpa, service conferences and public debate in order to obtain the authorizations », say Seci.

Accounts manipulated but collaboration also active with GimaTT (Ima group), entered with 20% last year in the newco created by Bio-on AMT Lab Srl, for applications of bioplastics to the tobacco sector. "It was an investment of 2.2 million euros – recalls the president of Gima TT, Sergio Marzo – not so significant with respect to our business (GimaTT's € 183 million revenue, ed) and consistent with the risk that a company must run to cover new market niches. After 8-9 months of inactivity with AMT Lab we started to organize meetings with our customers (names like Philip Morris, ed) to test the possibilities of using biopolymers in new generation products. In July, after the Quintessential complaints, everything stopped ".