Italy’s top court cleared fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana on Friday over charges of hiding hundreds of millions of euros from Italian tax authorities. In April, an appeals court gave a suspended sentence of 18 months in jail to the designers, who have always denied the charges. The suit stems from an investigation that began in 2008 when Italian authorities stepped up their fight against tax evasion as the global financial crisis began to bite. Fashion groups have come under tax authorities’ scrutiny in Italy partly because they performed better than most other sectors during the financial crisis, but the cases rarely come to court.
