Chinese masks, asked for a year and 4 months for former Covid emergency commissioner Domenico Arcuri

The judicial matter of the masks brought from China in the midst of the Covid emergency which involved the former commissioner Domenico Arcuri – for whom the corruption charge was dismissed and embezzlement was dropped – has arrived before the judge for the preliminary hearing . That he will have to decide on the requests of the Rome prosecutor’s office who requested a […]

The judicial affair of the masks brought in from China in the midst of the Covid emergency which involved the former commissioner Domenico Arcuri – for which the corruption charge had been dismissed and embezzlement had been dropped – arrived before the judge for the preliminary hearing. Who will have to decide on the requests of the Rome prosecutor’s office which asked for a sentence of 1 year and 4 months, as part of an abbreviated trial, for the former commissioner. The remaining charge is abuse of office.

The prosecutors also requested around ten indictments for the defendants who chose to be tried using the ordinary procedure. The defendants, according to what emerges from the indictment, were in “competition”. exploited personal and occult relationships with Arcuri obtaining the latter to ensure the partners of the entrepreneur Mario Benotti (later deceased ed.) a de facto exclusivity in the intermediation of supplies of surgical masks and personal protective equipment”.

Arcuri had told prosecutors that Benotti’s was the most advantageous offer. But for the Prosecutor’s Office the huge supply of Chinese masks has been the subject of multiple crimes. Those masks – which also ended up in hospital facilities – had been subjected to assessment by other prosecutors and the result of the tests was that they were potentially dangerous. But on this front there had been no dispute. The investigation by public prosecutors, Fabrizio Tucci and Gennaro Varone, concerned loans worth 1 billion and 250 thousand euros for the purchase of over 800 million masks, carried out with the intermediation of some Italian companies.

The prosecutors accuse Arcuri and Antonio Fabbrocini (his deputy at the time, ed.) of the absence of a contract for the mediation of Vincenzo Tommasi, the entrepreneur “partner” of the former Rai journalist, Mario Benotti, who later died. The prosecutors had contested that “the conclusion of the contracts” between the commissioner structure and Chinese suppliers had “found sole foundation in the moral suasion operated by Benotti, on the sole basis of personal relationship between him and Commissioner Arcuri”.