{"id":80565,"date":"2025-09-30T20:32:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-30T18:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/?p=80565"},"modified":"2025-09-30T21:14:17","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T19:14:17","slug":"court-of-appeal-sentences-italian-businessman-francesco-becchetti-to-12-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/court-of-appeal-sentences-italian-businessman-francesco-becchetti-to-12-years-in-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Court of Appeal sentences Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Court of Appeal with General Jurisdiction in Tirana has sentenced businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison, reducing his sentence by 5 years from the First Instance Court\u2019s decision, applying Article 55 which provides for the merging of sentences.<\/p>\n<p>The panel of Appeal judges\u2014Genti Shala, Brikena Ukperaj, and Dritan Hasani\u2014partially altered the initial ruling for part of the sentence.<\/p>\n<p>The Court of Appeal also reduced the sentence of Mauro De Renzis, Becchetti\u2019s associate, from 16 years in the First Instance Court to 12 years in prison.<\/p>\n<p>Becchetti\u2019s lawyers had appealed after the First Instance Court sentenced the Italian businessman to 17 years in prison, under accusations that through his companies he had created a scheme of VAT fraud and money laundering.<\/p>\n<p>Becchetti was charged with four criminal offenses: \u201cTheft through abuse of office,\u201d \u201cLaundering the proceeds of crime or criminal activity,\u201d \u201cForgery of documents,\u201d and \u201cCreation of fraudulent schemes related to value-added tax.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Court of Appeal with General Jurisdiction in Tirana has sentenced businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison, reducing his sentence by 5 years from the First Instance Court\u2019s decision, applying Article 55 which provides for the merging of sentences. The panel of Appeal judges\u2014Genti Shala, Brikena Ukperaj, and Dritan Hasani\u2014partially altered the initial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":80566,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[153,1803],"tags":[243,151],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Court of Appeal sentences Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison - Euronews Albania<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/euronews.al\/en\/court-of-appeal-sentences-italian-businessman-francesco-becchetti-to-12-years-in-prison\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court of Appeal sentences Italian businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison - Euronews Albania\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Court of Appeal with General Jurisdiction in Tirana has sentenced businessman Francesco Becchetti to 12 years in prison, reducing his sentence by 5 years from the First Instance Court\u2019s decision, applying Article 55 which provides for the merging of sentences. 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