‘ROBIN HOOD’ CONVICTED BUT WON’T GO TO JAIL

A court has convicted an Italian banker dubbed Robin Hood for taking money from wealthy clients and secretly transferring it to the accounts of poorer residents in his town so that they could qualify for loans.

Investigators determined that Gilberto Baschiera had not personally benefited from the scheme, which helped him strike a deal with prosecutors. He was convicted and sentenced on Monday to two years in prison, but he won’t have to go to jail due to a provision in Italian law that allows courts to show leniency on first-time offenders who were handed relatively short prison sentences.

He set up a shadowy banking system in the Italian town of Forni di Sopra, population 1,100, when the financial crisis wreaked havoc across the globe in 2009.

In 2016, the scheme went bust when clients defaulted on their loans and were unable to pay Baschiera back.