As reported by The Wall Street Journal:

MILAN (Dow Jones)–A Rome-based judge has signed off on the release of Fastweb SpA (FWB.MI) founder Silvio Scaglia, a spokeswoman of the Italian manager said late Monday in an emailed statement.

In February, Rome prosecutors arrested Scaglia and 55 people as part of an investigation into an alleged EUR2 billion money laundering and tax-fraud scam involving telecoms operator Fastweb and Telecom Italia SpA’s (TI) cable unit, Sparkle. Scaglia denied any wrongdoing.

Prosecutors said the tax-fraud scheme–allegedly using fabricated international phone-service purchases and sales–was carried out between 2003 and 2006, with the knowledge of top executives at Sparkle and Fastweb.

Scaglia served as Fastweb CEO until 2003 and was chairman until 2007, when Swisscom AG (SCMWY, SCMN.VX) bought the company.

-By Sabrina Cohen and Francesca Chiarano

“Silvio Scaglia, Defenders Prof. Piermaria Corso and Prof. Antonio Fiorella said, has already spent nearly three months in prison, as an innocent person. During this period, he did not reveal any circumstantial evidence which would support the prosecution’s belief that the engineer Scaglia “couldn’t NOT know” that there was tax fraud by an external criminal organization. It is not correct to keep him in prison and he should be freed today, as the passage of time has confirmed that there is no valid reason to keep him there.”