Rome prosecutors on Tuesday requested that former culture undersecretary Vittorio Sgarbi be indicted for alleged tax evasion in relation to the purchase of a painting.
The 71-year-old allegedly made it look like his partner and he had bought the artwork at auction in 2020 using money from a third party to hide the transaction from the inland revenue, whom he alleged owes around 715,000 euros.
Sgarbi, a famously volatile polemicist as well as one of Italy's stop art critics and historians, resigned from Premier GiorgiaMeloni's government after Italy's antitrust authority said that his private conferences and other lucrative activities were incompatible with his role as culture undersecretary.
He is also the subject of a separate criminal probe into anallegedly stolen painting.
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