Alberto Maria Genovese

Prima Assicurazioni

In 2014, Genovese founded Prima Assicurazioni, a tech company operating as an insurance agency, and became its chairman and CEO. In 2020, Prima Assicurazioni operated as a technology-based agency registered as an intermediary, which designed, priced, and distributed motor, motorcycle, and van liability policies underwritten by other insurers, including Great Lakes Insurance and La Parisienne Assurances, and managed customer service and claims itself. Genovese's strategy was to apply digital technology to established industries whose incumbent companies he considered insufficiently innovative; in the Italian motor market he saw about 40 million vehicles of which only four million were insured online. According to retrospectives, Prima Assicurazioni had exceeded three million customers within three years of its launch. In October 2018, Prima Assicurazioni closed the largest venture capital financing round in Italy: a €100 million increase, with Goldman Sachs and Blackstone Group as subscribers, in what was reported as one of the largest investments in the Italian startup sector for the year. In 2019, premiums rose from €77 million to more than €131 million and the company established partnerships with companies including Telepass and Conad. At the beginning of 2020, Prima Assicurazioni had about 537,000 customers, more than 600,000 policies, and nearly 180 employees, having moved to new offices in central Milan; about 40% of its customers came directly to its website rather than through comparison sites, and it was targeting more than one million customers during the year, preparing a home-insurance product, and opening a channel of physical agents and brokers, with plans to consider other markets from 2021.

In 2020, the year in which Genovese was removed from his positions at the company in November, Prima Assicurazioni had 1.1 million active customers, nearly €290 million in premiums, more than 5,000 customers each month for its claims service, and 339 staff members with an average age of 31. In November 2020, Genovese sold the final tranche of his stake in Prima Assicurazioni in a deal valued at €897 million. In 2022, Genovese sold his remaining 25% stake in Prima Assicurazioni for €200 million, bringing its valuation closer to €1 billion. In 2025, following Axa's acquisition of a 51% stake in Prima Assicurazioni, Genovese received an €89.7 million earn-out connected to his 2022 exit from the company; he had already disposed of his entire shareholding in 2022 and no longer held any corporate position at Prima Assicurazioni.

Other ventures

In 2010, Genovese launched Seguros.es, the Spanish version of the online insurance comparison site, which was then sold to the Rastreator group in 2014. After the sale of Facile.it, Genovese continued to pursue new ventures rather than leaving the tech sector. In 2015, Genovese founded Brumbrum.it, an online used car retailer in Italy, closing a €10 million investment round from United Ventures and selling it to a partner in 2019. Unlike a conventional intermediary, the company purchased cars directly and then resold them after preparing them for the market. He described the model as applying the same strategy he had used with Prima Assicurazioni: entering large industries whose established players had failed to keep pace with technological change. In 2019, Brumbrum.it received investment from Accel, which had previously invested in start-ups including Spotify and Deliveroo. Genovese served as Brumbrum's chairman until January 2019; according to the company, he had no operational role or delegated powers. In 2020, Zappyrent, a start-up focused on simplifying the medium- and long-term rental market, raised €2.5 million in a funding round that included Genovese and executives from Uber and BlaBlaCar, with Genovese becoming its chairman. Brumbrum.it was then sold to Cazoo in 2022 for €80 million.

Genovese was the chairman of Alberto Genovese Technologies, the holding company established by Genovese in late 2019 that controlled more than 50% of Prima Assicurazioni, a stake that was estimated at approximately €150 million. Through this company, he supported these and other ventures. In 2020, Genovese said that he had attracted €160 million in capital, created more than €1 billion in value, and was involved in companies employing around 1,200 people. Genovese adopted a serial-entrepreneur model, reinvesting the proceeds of his successful ventures into other start-ups and combining capital, expertise, and experience across them. He also established a personal hub in the area around Piazza Cordusio in Milan, where he brought together some of the nine start-ups in which he had invested and applied what colleagues described as the "Genovese touch", centred on identifying talent, assembling teams, and helping projects scale. Around the same period, Genovese held stakes in several start-ups, including Abiby, a beauty company; Zappyrent and Jobtech, both in the tech sector; and Mirta.com, an e-commerce company. As a result of his successes, he was dubbed "the king of start-ups", and was also variously described as "the wizard of start-ups", a "genius", and a "successful businessman".

Following his arrest in November 2020, Genovese was removed as chairman and CEO of Prima Assicurazioni, with his responsibilities transferred to co-founder George Ottathycal. Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, which held stakes in the company, supported the decision. Moreover, Alberto Genovese Technologies, the holding company through which he controlled a majority stake in Prima Assicurazioni, revoked him as a director and subsequently changed its name to First Technologies Holding in December. Prima Assicurazioni also appointed an external law firm to conduct an internal investigation into Genovese's conduct in managing the company and to look for evidence of possible misconduct. By 2021, Genovese still held small stakes in around ten smaller companies, including Abiby and Hostess.it. In early 2021, investigators were examining the ownership structure of Prima Assicurazioni, which they said was linked to the Swiss holding company Alej Holding AG, based in the canton of Zug. The company formerly known as Alberto Genovese Technologies held a 58.31% stake in Prima Assicurazioni among 15 shareholders, and its reported shareholders included Luxembourg-based AGH SA, Alej Holding AG, and TDA Industries GmbH, a Swiss company reportedly controlled through Zanjero Limited, based in Nicosia, Cyprus. In July 2026, while serving his sentence under a semi-custodial regime, Genovese returned to the tech sector with the €40 million project named Laura.it, a new start-up focused on digital motor insurance.

Sexual assault and drug trafficking conviction

For the sexual assault and drug-related charges arising from the 2020 incidents in Milan and Ibiza, Genovese requested a fast-track trial, which was approved in June 2022 by the Milan court. The charges concerned two women: an 18-year-old Italian model and student who was allegedly assaulted during a party at Terrazza Sentimento in Milan on 10 October 2020, and a 23-year-old Italian model who was allegedly assaulted at Villa Lolita, a luxury villa in Ibiza, on 10 July 2020. The 18-year-old later said that she had feared for her life during the assault, while the 23-year-old was reported to have suffered injuries that left her unable to continue working as a model and with a 40% permanent disability. The investigation also involved Genovese's then-girlfriend, Sarah Borruso, who was initially investigated for alleged complicity in the Ibiza assault, for which she was subsequently convicted as a co-defendant and sentenced to two years and five months' imprisonment.

Genovese's defence argued that his conduct was connected to drug addiction and mental health problems and sought recognition of diminished capacity. More specifically, Genovese's lawyers sought his full acquittal on the charges concerning the 23-year-old woman, while arguing for recognition of diminished capacity and the minimum sentence in relation to the assault against the 18-year-old woman. A defence psychological assessment stated that Genovese had personality disorders and was affected by Asperger syndrome, and argued that these conditions, combined with his consumption of alcohol and drugs, had impaired his ability to understand that the women were not consenting.

In September 2022, the Milan court sentenced him to eight years and four months' imprisonment for the rape of two women and drug-related offences. The court rejected the defence's arguments concerning diminished capacity and found that the violence had been committed with conscious cruelty. Genovese subsequently waived his right to appeal. Moreover, the court ordered Genovese to pay a €50,000 provisional compensation payment (provvisionale) to the 18-year-old victim, while leaving the full assessment of damages to separate civil proceedings; her lawyers had sought approximately €1.5 million in compensation. In January 2023, following his waiver of the appeal, the sentence was reduced to six years and eleven months under sentence-reduction provisions introduced by the Cartabia reform. Although the reduction was a consequence of the applicable procedural provisions and did not overturn the convictions for rape, it drew criticism from the Italian national network of anti-violence centres, which argued that the Cartabia reform had further reduced a sentence that was already limited and could result in Genovese being released before the victims received adequate compensation. The sentence became final in March 2023 at six years and eleven months: five years and four months for drug trafficking and one year and seven months for sexual violence.

Further allegations and civil damages

Following the first conviction, further allegations were investigated; five of seven cases were ultimately archived, while the remaining allegations led to a second trial conducted between December 2023 and July 2024. In February 2024, Genovese chose a fast-track trial for the second set of proceedings, which concerned further allegations involving other women, as well as charges of obstruction of justice and possession of child sexual abuse material. The trial phase began in May 2024.

In this separate second trial, concluded in July 2024, Genovese was acquitted of the sexual-assault charges involving a 24-year-old former girlfriend, who had accused him of multiple assaults between 2019 and 2020. He was instead convicted of a separate attempted sexual assault, obstruction of justice, and possession of child sexual abuse material. The attempted assault concerned a 22-year-old woman who—according to the prosecution—had been lured into a room by Borruso and found semi-conscious and undressed on 25 February 2020. Borruso was convicted as a co-defendant for the attempted sexual assault and sentenced to one year in prison; her sentence was subsequently converted into one year of community service in Rome. Genovese was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment, in continuation with the definitive six-year-and-eleven-month sentence from the first proceedings, and fined €6,000. The court found it proven that he had offered €8,000 to the 18-year-old victim from the first case in an attempt to induce her to alter the accusations in her complaint, and that he had possessed child sexual abuse material. The court also transmitted the case materials to the Milan Prosecutor's Office for an investigation into the former girlfriend on suspicion of calumny.

The full amount of civil damages owed to the victims has not been publicly determined beyond the €50,000 provisional payment ordered in the 2022 criminal proceedings; Genovese had previously offered €130,000 to the first victim and €25,000 to the second, but both offers were rejected. In January 2023, the first victim appealed on civil grounds, seeking slightly more than €2 million in damages, after the criminal court had awarded her a €50,000 provisional payment and referred the assessment of the full damages to the civil court. In the second trial, the victim of the attempted sexual assault for which Genovese was convicted was awarded €5,000 in compensation. By September 2024, the first victim had received the €50,000 provisional compensation payment ordered in the criminal proceedings, together with an additional undisclosed amount to settle the civil aspects of her claim.

Media coverage and impact

The case received extensive media coverage in Italy, drawing attention in part because of Genovese's public profile as a prominent entrepreneur in the startup and tech sectors and the details that emerged during the investigation. It sparked a broad public debate on issues including sexual consent, substance abuse, and excesses associated with entrepreneurial circles and Milan's nightlife. The case also prompted debate over media coverage and victim-blaming. In November 2020, journalist Vittorio Feltri was criticised for an editorial published in Libero, in which he described the 18-year-old victim as "naive" and questioned her decision to attend Genovese's home. The controversy also involved an article published by Il Sole 24 Ore about the case, which was criticised for its treatment of the events and subsequently modified. Politician Laura Boldrini wrote an article addressing the media coverage of the case that was not published by the Italian edition of HuffPost, then led by Mattia Feltri, the son of Vittorio Feltri. The controversy was subsequently discussed by Vittorio Feltri and journalist Peter Gomez on the television programme La Confessione, where Feltri maintained that describing the victim as "naive" was not an offence, while Gomez argued that the article had contributed to victim-blaming. Genovese subsequently put Terrazza Sentimento up for sale.

Tax evasion

In January 2021, Genovese was investigated in a separate financial investigation into his business activities and wealth. Prosecutors registered him for the alleged fraudulent transfer of assets, examining a network of companies and start-ups in which he held ownership interests or management positions, including entities based abroad. The investigation was intended to establish whether some of the companies had been used to conceal his ownership and whether there were grounds for allegations of tax fraud or money laundering. The financial investigation subsequently focused on Genovese's bank accounts, corporate holdings, and financial transactions.

In April 2021, a Milan judge rejected a request by prosecutors to seize €4.3 million in connection with alleged tax offences relating to 2018 and 2019. Prosecutors alleged that Genovese had treated certain employment-related income as capital income and had used the holding company Auliv in connection with the disposal of shares in Facile.it. In November 2021, Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed the seizure of €4.3 million. In its reasoning, the Supreme Court found that the tax allegations concerned, among other things, the treatment of income derived from Genovese's activities at Facile.it and the use of Auliv to manage financial flows and corporate interests. Prosecutors alleged that the arrangements had enabled him to finance personal expenditure, including the purchase and renovation of a villa in Ibiza and other luxury expenses.

In June 2024, in the tax evasion proceedings arising from the financial investigation opened in January 2021, Genovese sought a plea agreement over €4.3 million in unpaid taxes, proposing a ten-month sentence converted into a €75,000 monetary penalty. On 2 July, the Milan court ratified the agreement, imposing the ten-month sentence converted into a €75,000 monetary penalty; Genovese had already reimbursed the tax authorities.