History

The Yesmoke , founded by the brothers Carlo and Gianpaolo Messina with the inauguration of the Settimo Torinese factory in 2005 , a of the only two manufactures of cigarettes on the Italian territory. The Yesmoke brand was immediately characterized by the battle waged in order to abolish the minimum price of cigarette packs and, more generally, to obtain compliance also in Italy with the European legislation relating to the production of cigarettes ( disapplied legislation, as attested by the judgments obtained by Yesmoke ). Following a long lawsuit, first normative and then judicial, the Settimo Torinese plant was placed under judicial seizure in November 2014 as part of an investigation coordinated by the prosecutor of Turin for alleged tax evasion and then, after ups and downs and adverse sentences, to arrive at the company’s bankruptcy in 2016. The measure did not lead to the interruption of production as the competent magistrates considered that, even if the charges against the owners had proved to be well founded, a large part of the factory’s production however, it would have been intended for lawful sales channels. The judicial misadventures of the Yesmoke of the Messina brothers, unfortunately, will not end here. In 2018, thanks to the intervention of a Swiss investment company, the Swiss Merchant Corporation SA of Lugano, the company was taken over, the staff reinstated and, at all now, work is underway to relaunch the company. Yesmoke cigarettes, under the new management, are now in the tobacconists throughout Italy thanks to an industrial project that wants the company to be the interpreter of a Made in Italy protagonist in the world. The director Michele Fornasero dedicated the documentary to the events of Yesmoke and its founders SmoKings , released in 2014 and awarded at the Festival dei Popoli of the same year.