Word: sgarbi
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...surprisingly, there are already signs of a mini cultural counterrevolution - not from the youth ranks but rather from an old face of Italian public life. Vittorio Sgarbi - an art-critic provocateur and lifelong political carpetbagger, having held key posts in the Italian Cultural Ministry and Milan city council - is now mayor of the small Sicilian town of Salemi, which is trying to make its mark on the map as a major wine-producing region. "We have to teach young people to drink Italian wine," Sgarbi declared to the AGI news agency last week. "If there's something...
...Sgarbi's undoing was Germany's wealthiest woman, industrialist and philanthropist Susanne Klatten. Having already received $8.84 million from Klatten, who owns 12.5% of German carmaker BMW and a majority of chemical firm Altana, and is a married mother of three, Sgarbi tried to blackmail her with a secretly filmed video showing the couple in bed. But instead of sending him the negotiated $17.7 million (down from the $366 million police say he asked for), Klatten sent the police. (See pictures...
...times one of his victims had called him on his scam. Sgarbi's usual ploy, according to investigators, was to prowl hotel bars. Not just any hotel bars, though. The soft-spoken man booked himself into exclusive spas in Austria and Switzerland, places that invite well-paying clientele to leave their normal life behind, to unwind and open up. Selling himself as someone in need of rest as well, Sgarbi would strike up conversation when his victim's guard was down. For some of his victims, the handsome man must have seemed just like part of the therapy...
...From the little they have said publicly, Sgarbi's victims were apparently tricked in similar ways. Once a relationship was established, he would feign an emergency and then ask for help. Susanne Klatten, for example, was presented with a wild story of a car accident in the U.S., followed by a mafia demand that Sgarbi pay compensation to the parents of a child that had been hurt. Business colleagues and German reporters have described Klatten as normally skeptical and the possessor of a highly analytical mind. Nevertheless, she handed over $8.84 million in cash in the underground parking...
...same hotel was also the site of the blackmail set-up, German police say. On August 21, 2007, the couple met in room 629. Next door, Italian Ernano Barretta filmed the rendezvous. Barretta was arrested along with Sgarbi in January last year, as they sat in a car waiting for their next chunk of cash. On March 23, an Italian court in Pescara will decide whether Barretta, 63, has a case to answer. Barretta, the leader of a Christian sect in northern Italy of which Sgardi is a member, says he is "100% innocent...