ROME — Magistrates in Rome have ordered the seizure of property worth €70 million (£60 million) from eight middlemen suspected of using high level contacts to exploit Italy’s desperate need for facemasks at the start of the coronavirus pandemic last year.

  The assets seized include a yacht worth €770,000, a Harley Davidson motorbike worth €500,000, valuable Rolex and Daytona watches, and a number of apartments.

  The magistrates said the group of businessmen earned commissions worth €72 million on the purchase of 800 million facemasks from China at a cost to the Italian state of €1.2 billion. The suspects are accused of illicit influence trafficking, receipt of stolen property and money laundering.

  The group is alleged to have exploited a personal connection between Mario Benotti, a journalist who runs two communications technology companies, and Domenico Arcuri, the manager chosen by the government of Giuseppe Conte to spearhead Italy’s response to the pandemic.

  The magistrates subsequently placed one of the suspects, Ecuadorean businessman Jorge San Andres Solis, under house arrest and banned four others including Benotti from carrying out business operations. 

  The magistrates said they had evidence of almost 1,300 telephone contacts between Benotti, 56, and Arcuri, 57, between February and April 2020. 

  Arcuri has been the public face of Italy’s battle against Covid-19. As extraordinary commissioner for the health emergency he supervised the hunt for scarce masks, ventilators and gels when the Italian health service was overwhelmed by coronavirus patients, oversaw the purchase of new desks on wheels for socially-distanced schools and is now in charge of the country’s vaccination programme.

  The magistrates said there was no evidence that he or his office had received payments in connection with the facemask contracts and he is not under investigation. But in their confiscation order they said Benotti and his colleagues had enjoyed privileged access to the commissioner’s office, which had been subject to “illicit manipulation” and had preferred to entrust the mask acquisitions to “improvised freelances” rather than creating its own commercial channels.

  In an intercepted phone call one of the suspects is said to have expressed enthusiasm at the prospect of making more money from a new wave of the virus in the autumn. “The greed and cynicism of the protagonists emerges clearly,” the magistrates wrote.

  The son of a deputy editor of the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano, Benotti enjoys high level contacts at the Holy See and in Italian political circles. He worked as a consultant to the prime minister’s office under Matteo Renzi and as an adviser to several centre-left ministers and the mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, despite recent media questions about the authenticity of some of his qualifications.

  Investigative TV programmes have suggested that an alternative supply of facemasks from South Korea was offered to Arcuri’s office but ignored. The masks cost one third of those chosen from China and the Italian businessman who could make the connection did not want to be paid.

  The suspects deny wrongdoing and Benotti insists he intervened to help his country in a moment of crisis and at the explicit request of the Covid commissioner.