Head of Italy’s Film Department Steps Down After Tax Credit Scandal
Nicola Borrelli, head of the film department of Italy’s culture ministry, has stepped down in the wake of a mounting scandal involving a roughly $1 million dollar production tax credit granted for a film that never got made, allegedly partly produced by a U.S. citizen who stands accused of a double murder.
Borrelli is well-respected in Italian cinema circles and has led the film department for many years. He stepped down late on Wednesday after Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli last week personally escorted Italian police inside the film department’s offices to seize documents pertaining to the scandal.
The tax credit scandal erupted last month when it emerged that the film department led by Borrelli had granted and paid out a €863,595 ($1 million) tax credit for a feature film set in Rome titled “Stelle della Notte” that never got made.
The lead producer on this fake project is a 46-year-old U.S. citizen reportedly named Charles Francis Kaufmann who was arrested last month on the Greek island of Skiatos, in an operation involving cooperation between the Italian and Greek police forces as well as the FBI. The man, who used the alias Rexal Ford and had a fake passport, is suspected of killing a woman and her infant daughter, whose bodies were discovered in Rome’s Villa Pamphili park.
Kaufmann, who maintains his innocence in the double murder, is expected to soon be extradited to Italy to face trial.
The U.S. citizen applied for the Italian tax credit through a company named Tintagel Films that purported to be working in partnership with an Italian company named Coevolutions. Coevolutions had effective control of the one million dollar tax credit that was reportedly paid out in November 2023.
On Wednesday, during a question time in Italy’s parliament, the culture minister announced more stringent measures to be put in place to check how Italian tax credits are granted and paid out.
Prior to his resignation, Borrelli told several Italian news outlets that the paperwork pertaining to “Stelle della Notte” was legitimate and that for years he had been asking for more stringent controls to be placed by the government on Italy’s production tax credit. The incentive for local productions has long been frozen after coming under fire from Italy’s right-wing government who even prior to the scandal was claiming it was wasteful.
However the current tax credit scandal for productions is not expected to impact Italy’s international production rebates. As Borrelli noted during a panel held in May by Variety in Cannes, the country’s 40% rebate for international film and TV productions is fully operational. While other countries offer a similar tax credit percentage, “in Italy 70% of our tax credit can be used immediately during filming. It’s cash back as you go,” Borrelli pointed out at the time. That is not expected to change in the wake of the scandal.
International productions currently shooting in Italy comprise Bobby Moresco-directed biopic “Maserati: The Brothers” with a cast comprising Al Pacino, Anthony Hopkins and Jessica Alba, Ridley Scott’s “The Dog Stars” with Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, and Margaret Qualley and “Martin Scorsese Presents: The Saints.” Mel Gibson‘s “The Resurrection of the Christ” is set to start shooting at Rome’s Cinecittà Studios in late August.
