Both Defendants looked nervous and gravely concerned at the conundrum they found themselves in, and so they should because ending up imprisoned in a foreign country is no holiday and certainly very difficult for them and their families.
Yamaguchi, who claims he was a former official of the Ministry of Finance in Japan had already spent Twelve (12) years in prison in Japan, commencing 1984, for fraudulent activities. His actual sentence was Twenty (20) years, but with good behaviour he was released from prison in Twelve (12) years.
Watanabe was a former executive of Merrill Lynch Bank, the US banking giant, so any chance of Watanabe gaining future employment within the Financial or Banking world was now zero. Records show that Watanabe had never been convicted of anything as serious as fraud and criminal activities in relation to Financial Instruments, however, it now appeared that he was about to experience incarceration and certainly a black future.
Both the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Financial Crime Police assumed that the Court would issue a “Extended Remanded in Custody” order against the “Defendants” on the grounds that the crime committed was serious enough to warrant a “further remand” order, together with the fact that further investigations were necessary which would indeed take some time to complete as there was an “International” factor involved and therefore results of investigations would take time to obtain.
There was no doubting of the rare efficiency of the Italian Police, but the concentration or focus may be doubted based upon facts revealed later.
Contrary to the thoughts of the Police, the lawyer for the “Defendants” made an application to the Court for “Court Bail” based upon the fact that the “Defendants” were holders of Diplomatic Passports, although not actually travelling on said Passports, whereby under the Vienna Convention, Diplomats / Holder of Diplomatic Passports can not be held under arrest for any crime committed and for which the issuing country of the Diplomatic Passports were responsible for their Diplomats.
The Judge, understanding the possible political implications involved, realised that it was not within the realm of duties to openly dispute, act, or adjudicate contrary to the United Nations Vienna Convention 1961, to which Italy was a signature thereof, therefore the application for bail was granted upon which the “Defendants” and their lawyer left the court, on the basis that the “Defendants” would attend the organised and confirmed interrogation by the Crime Investigation Department on June 30th.
The lawyer returned to his office, making arrangements to meet with the “Defendants” the following day so that he could make all appropriate notes and prepare a proper defence. Little did he realise at that time what the “Defendants” were structuring in their minds.
In the meantime and immediately following the authorisation and issuance of the Search Warrants and Arrest Warrants the Financial Crime Police were able to organise the appropriate squads of police to systematically search all property, bank accounts, records, etc of every Italian whose name just happened to be on the list written on note paper found in Akihiko Yamaguchi’s briefcase, and those who appeared on the mobile phone information extracted by specialists working for the Italian Police.
Whether these additional people were actually involved in this crime or not appeared to be irrelevant to the police. Names were listed and those names needed to be, and would be fully investigated. After all no one knew at that stage what else may, or may not be revealed from these searches. The Police, probably quietly inactive for a considerable period of time as experienced criminals would never follow the same operational methods or travel itinerary that Yamaguchi and Watanabe had chosen; had now got something they could get their teeth into, and nothing was going to stop them or get in their way.
According to the police records, several properties were searched, but no arrests were made on the grounds that no evidence or information in respect of the connection, or relationship to the “Defendants” was found. In most cases it was a question of having met the “Defendants” and discussed a few things, but not actually becoming involved, except in the case of one person, being an aged Italian Gentleman by the name of Alessandro Santi, age 73, born on Sept. 4, 1937 in Milan, resident in Carimate, Italy, who was effectively retired. Alessandro Santi was, and is, undertaking some work as a Financial “Broker”.
A copy of that particular Search Warrant, extracted from the Court Records, dated 19th June 2009, and undersigned by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, follows:
On June 25th, 2009, the search was undertaken of Mr Alessandro Santi’s property. The results of this search are as follows.
During the search of Alessandro Santi’s property the following items were found:
a) in the office of SANTI Alessandro, at his residence:
#1 personal computer desktop, Sony Vaio, model PCV-E 31M, s/n 28222655 5300368
#1 hard disk, WD Elements, model WD6400E035-00, s/n C100WBZD
#17 Floppy disks
#12 CD-Rom
#1 cell phone Blackberry, IMEI 359181019854681 provided with a TIM SIM card
#1 ring binder containing:
# 4 Photostat copies of bonds in Japanese language, reading October 21, 2005 on the back and marked by the numbers A1004, A1005, A1006 and A1007, each one of them kept in an envelope reading the same number of the bond
#one brochure regarding the “Dragon Family” Foundation with some pictures
#19 original sheets of paper, all regarding the “Dragon Family” Foundation and enumerated progressively from 1 to 19, down on the left
#1 address book “Mignon” with various handwritten phone numbers
# 1 brochure “Alice” with handwritten annotations
b) in the office located on the ground floor:
#1 notebook of the year 2009 (of which copies of the records were made and later given back to the person under investigation)
c) in the safe deposit box #1376 cat. L available to Mrs. and Mr. SANTI c/o the agency of the CASSA RURALE ED ARTIGIANA DI CANTU’, in Carimate (CO), Corso Unità d’Italia, 11:
#1 yellow envelope containing #1 Photostat copy of bond in Japanese language and marked by A1309 and reading October 18, 2006 on the back
#1 internal hard disk, Western Digital, (WD P/N) WD 1200BEVS – 22RSTO
#1 pen-drive, Dikom, 128 MB
#1 pen-drive, Jetflash, 128 MB
# 1 pen-drive, Jetflash, 512 MB
# 12 machine written sheets regarding a bank account registered to SANTI Alessandro/BRAMANI Elda, opened in an Austrian bank
#1 deposit slip of 100 Euro of the current account mentioned above, dated May 1, 2009
There is a question here as to whether the Bonds, Certificates found during the search of Alessandro Santi’s property were actually Photostat copies or the real and genuine Bonds and Certificates, as some of the same were also listed as being found in Akihiko Yamaguchi’s briefcase. Carefully Photostatted original documents can look, and be presumed, real in many cases. The difference would be in the gram weight of the paper. Financial Instruments are printed on a specific gram weight of paper and sometimes on the slightly heavier Security Paper that Governments and Banks use. Furthermore, when the FRN and FRB Certificates are copied they actually show a different colour because of the Security Paper used in printing these certificates. Based upon the latter and for the benefit of the doubt, and as previously stated, the Italian Police knew nothing about these Financial Instruments so initially they were probably not aware of what were real certificates or just copies, or they could not distinguish between the two because of their complete lack of knowledge about such certificates.
From other evidence gathered by the police, together with Alessandro’s own statement, the police had no alternative but to charge Alessandro Santi with being an accomplice to a crime, being in possession of Financial Instruments which were assumed at this stage to be fake and fraudulent instruments, and attempting to commit fraud in conjunction with others.