Catania, mayor of Tremestieri Etneo arrested for corruption

CATANIA. He had moved from the UDC to a sort of regional civic list, then to Italia Viva, to the Pd and then to the League, always as the absolute lord of preferences: today Luca Sammartino, vice president of the Sicily Region, was suspended from public office for a year. An ugly story of the mafia – which does not directly concern the political exponent – and of corruption, referring to the 2019 electoral campaign, when Sammartino militated among the dems and supported the then PD candidate for the European elections, Caterina Chinnici, who has now passed weapons and luggage at Forza Italia.

The current Northern League representative had just returned from Verona, where, as regional councilor for Agriculture, he had represented Sicily at Vinitaly: the carabinieri operation, called Pandora, with a not so veiled reference to the famous inexhaustible box of surprises, was taken just at dawn today, with the commitment of a hundred men who moved in the provinces of Etna and Palermo, under the coordination of the Catania DDA. The situation of Sammartino (who is already on trial for vote-swapping, again in his native Catania) now puts the Sicilian governor of Forzi, Renato Schifani, who leads an already agitated centre-right coalition, in further serious trouble.

Eleven precautionary measures issued by the investigating judge: politicians, municipal officials and entrepreneurs involved, accused in various capacities of political-mafia electoral exchange, extortion aggravated by the mafia method, aggravated corruption, incitement to corruption and disturbed freedom of auctions. The facts investigated by the Carabinieri’s investigative unit refer to the period between 2018 and 2021. There are illicit agreements between some administrators of the Municipality of Tremestieri Etneo and elements close to the Santapaola-Ercolano mafia gang, concerning the election in 2015 of the current mayor of the town in the Catania hinterland, Santi Rando. The mayor, who today ended up in prison for political-mafia electoral exchange and aggravated corruption, is considered a Sammartino loyalist and is said to be responsible for the “business degeneration” of his municipality.

It is in this context that the role of Sammartino emerges, ready to guarantee a sort of pact between Rando and his main opponent in the city council, Mario Ronsisvalle. He, owner of a pharmacy in Tremestieri, would have obtained a reduction in the number of pharmacies in the municipal organic plan, in exchange for electoral support, both in the European elections of five years ago and in the subsequent local elections, for the candidate supported by Sammartino for the election in Strasbourg. Caterina Chinnici, daughter of Rocco, the judge killed by Cosa Nostra with the “Lebanese” car bomb in 1983, is not involved in the investigation. When she moved to FI she was subjected to very harsh attacks for the “betrayal”. But she – in her certain unawareness and in the probable one of the Democratic Party – she had been supported electorally in this way too.