The Versace family vehemently denies rumors of links with the Calabrian mafia

Santo Versace said he believes anyone talking about the connection between Gianni Versace and ‘Ndrangheta, the Calabrian Mafia, “doesn’t deserve to exist.”

“It’s absolutely all false,” the owner of the famous Italian fashion houses said in an interview to be aired on private TV station Canale 5.

Santo Versace has described the allegations made by two former mobsters as “a mountain of false inventions”. The allegations made by the two, who are in a witness protection program, were cited in the novel written by journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, published in early December in Italy, according to which Gianni Versace was murdered because of unpaid loans to the mafia organization ‘Ndrangheta.

“The Gianni Versace company has never laundered dirty money or trafficked drugs. Everyone knows this,” Santo Versace said, emphasizing that in the years evoked by the book, the Versace group “had incredible benefits of hundreds of billions and paid taxes worth of a few hundred billion.”

Santo Versace explained he wanted to do the interview in order to respond to statements made by one of two former mobsters, who was interviewed on December 2 by journalists at Canale 5, because “Gianni Versace can not submit his own version of the facts and cannot answer.”

The head of the Versace group stressed, however, that one of the two former mobsters has been previously convicted for libel, and the second never talked about this topic until recently.

Santo Versace announced he would sue “any person who makes false statements.”

Gianni Versace, who was murdered by a serial killer outside his residence in Miami, Florida, in 1997, was never investigated or charged with mafia association.