Italian cocktail bar couple avoid prosecution with champagne plea bargain

MILAN (Reuters) -An Italian couple who used to run a luxury cocktail bar in Milan have avoided prosecution on drugs and prostitution charges with a plea bargain that will see them hand over vast amounts of champagne and other drinks, legal sources said on Wednesday.

Davide Lacerenza and his ex-partner Stefania Nobile were the people behind "La Gintoneria", a Milanese nightlife hotspot that was closed down following their arrest, in March, on charges of abetting and exploiting prostitution, and drug dealing.

A pre-trial judge accepted a plea bargain agreement that will result in the confiscation and auctioning of assets seized from the bar, including the contents of its cellar, worth in total around 900,000 euros ($1.05 million), sources said.

Under the deal, Lacerenza was sentenced to four years and eight months, and Nobile to three years, but both were expected to be spared from jail and given the chance to serve time doing community work.

Under Italian law, plea bargaining is not an admission of guilt. Such deals are negotiated by the prosecution and the defence and approved by a pre-trial judge, and normally require defendants to pay damages.

The lawyer who represented Lacerenza and Nobile, Liborio Cataliotti, described Wednesday's decision as a balanced outcome in which "there are no winners or losers". He also said Lacerenza had been left penniless.

Before his downfall, Lacerenza was known for flashy social media posts and interviews in which he talked about his cocaine habit, his taste for Ferrari supercars, and the "many" call girls that frequented his bar.

Speaking to the Radio 24 broadcaster in 2023, he said a bottle of champagne at his venue could cost as much as 4,500 euros ($5,250), while red wine bottles had a price tag of up to 18,000 euros.

Nobile, on the other hand, was a famous TV shopping presenter in the 1990s, along with her mother Wanna Marchi. The two women were arrested and convicted of fraud in an affair revisited by the 2022 Netflix documentary "Wanna".

($1 = 0.8575 euros)

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Alexandra Hudson)