Dario Item, Swiss aristocrat, ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to Spain, and lawyer on the hunt for financial scandals

Eduardo González The Swiss diplomat, lawyer, and aristocrat Dario Item is, in addition to being the current ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda to Spain, an analyst and lawyer specializing in international financial scandals, among other matters. Dario Item, Count of Rothes, born in Naples 53 years ago, descends from an ancient and noble Swiss family originally from Malans and Bonaduz, in the canton of Grisons, which moved in 1800 to Naples, then the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. All his ancestors held high positions in Swiss regiments serving the royal house of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, to which the Item family was always particularly devoted. His great-great-grandfather, Vincenzo Item, was awarded a double gold medal in the Battle of Gaeta (1860-1861). Great-grandfather Aurelio Item is credited with the discovery of the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii, originally called Villa Item. According to the biography published on the Embassy's own website, Lord Rothes attended compulsory secondary school in Lugano, Switzerland. He then attended the University of Geneva in Switzerland and the Universities of Parma, Ferrara, Teramo, and Genoa in Italy. Lord Rothes holds a Bachelor of Laws (1996) and a Bachelor of Political Science (2004), a Master of Arts in Trust Law (2005) and in Legal Psychology and Psychopathology of Criminal Conduct (2006), a PhD in Criminal Law (2009), and a Master of Arts in International Financial Crimes (2012). In 1998, he passed the bar exam at the Court of Appeal of the Canton of Ticino in Lugano, and in 1999, the notary public exam. In 2001, in Rome, he passed the bar exam that allowed him to practice law in Italy. Since 1998, he has practiced international law, specializing in criminal law, trust law, banking law, and diplomatic and consular law. In 2015, he moved to London, where he opened a branch of his law firm. In 2016, he joined the diplomatic corps of Antigua and Barbuda, assuming the position of Consul General, and, since 2018, he has served as Head of Mission at the Embassy in Madrid. In his capacity as a lawyer, Dario Item has been involved, for example, in a transparency lawsuit against major Swiss banks after he himself discovered a series of documents demonstrating that Credit Suisse and the Swiss government regulator, FINMA, had attempted to use Swiss bank secrecy laws to conceal crucial documents from American investors. This has brought the powerful Swiss bank (which collapsed in February 2023) into conflict with the US federal courts. It so happens that Dario Item's own information related to this case is accessible directly from the Embassy's website, including an interview given in June 2023 to the newspaper El Español in which he denounced, as "ambassador of Antigua and Barbuda," that "the Credit Suisse AT1 case was an expropriation." The Embassy's website also provides direct access to the law firm Legale I&P Law Office SA, to which the ambassador belongs. “Through his influential position in Madrid, Ambassador Item has become a key voice for accountability in this global scandal. A deadline of October 17, 2025, has been set for the next filings in the New York case, a date that could force a major confrontation between Swiss secrecy and American justice,” wrote journalist Daniel Brooks, who specializes in global business, technology, and political affairs, in the online newspaper ‘The Latin News’ this past Monday. Dario Item also publishes regular articles in the online newspaper ‘Antigua News’. In one of them, dated July 3 and titled “Europe after 1945: Losing the war, losing itself,” the ambassador lamented that, despite having militarily defeated “its worst dictators,” Europe lost at the end of World War II “something harder to see and even harder to restore: dignity.” From 1945 onwards, the ambassador explained, “Europe's future was no longer decided in Paris or Berlin; it was decided in Yalta, by Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. One superpower from the West, another from the East, and Europe in between, deprived of its voice.” “Today, that dignity still seems fragile. The world has changed. The United States is retreating. China is rising. Wars are near again. But Europe? Europe still has history and resilience, and sometimes history and resilience are a better compass than power,” the article concluded.

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