(Adds comment from Matteo Marzotto)
MILAN, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Italian police have seized assets
worth 65 million euros ($83.5 million) in a tax probe involving
the 5.3 billion euro sale of fashion houses Hugo Boss and
Valentino in 2007.
Italy's tax police said on Monday they had confiscated real
estate, land and corporate holdings of 13 people "linked to one
of Italy's most important families in the fashion and textile
sector."
A person familiar with the investigation told Reuters the 13
people in question were linked to the Marzotto group, and
included members of the Marzotto family.
Marzotto sold Valentino Fashion Group - then including both
the Valentino label and Hugo Boss - to private finance group
Permira in 2007.
Those under investigation are suspected of not having filed
tax returns.
The Italian government has set fighting chronic tax evasion
as one of its priorities as it seeks to come to grips with the
country's towering debt crisis and find resources to fund
growth.
Lawyers representing the Marzotto family said the decision
taken by Milan prosecutors ordering the seizure was "totally
groundless".
The lawyers said bank documents showed capital gains from
the operation had been declared and taxed.
"I acknowledge the seizure measures. I think it right only
to point out that I did not have any operative position in the
company in which I was minority partner," Matteo Marzotto, a
board member of the textile family group, said in a statement.
The technocrat government of Prime Minister Mario Monti has
described the fight against tax evasion as a state of war and
has stepped up monitoring and collection efforts.
Earlier this year the head of Italy's Inland Revenue
service, Attilio Befera, said tax evasion totalled some 120
billion euros.
A spokesperson for the Marzotto Group declined to comment,
saying the news did not involve the company or any of its units.
Police said in a statement the probe revealed that a
Luxembourg-based holding company used by the Marzotto Group in
the sale made a capital gain of nearly 200 million euros,
resulting in tax evasion of 65 million euros.
"The investigation... revealed that a financial holding
company purposefully created in Luxembourg was instead
administered from Italy," the police said.
($1 = 0.7785 euros)
(Reporting by Sara Rossi, Stephen Jewkes and Antonella Ciancio;
editing by Patrick Graham and David Cowell)