LATINA – “On the Latina Ambiente issue, on the political implications that were wanted to be given to the case and on the innovations that have recently occurred, we discussed at length during a recent city council meeting, and I never stopped asking myself whether or not it was advisable to support the establishment of the Municipality of Latina as a civil party in the trial in which 26 people are accused.
I am not the judge, nor do I want to replace the work of the Court, I was elected by the citizens to pursue the public interest and I feel the duty to find the best answer to the questions that torment me, without taking a step back from my nature of conviction guarantor.
It comforts me to have found this same spirit in the administration that preceded me, the one led by the former mayor Coletta, who on 19 July 2016, the day before the preliminary hearing for the procedure for the Borgo Piave EPP variant, with the outcome of an informal meeting of the Council had taken the decision, which would have been valid as a general guideline, to await the outcome of the preliminary hearing before becoming a civil party in proceedings involving administrators or employees of the organisation.
But on the other hand, the position taken by a group of managers of the Municipality of Latina who were invited by the Municipal Attorney’s Office on 23 February 2023 to express an opinion on the opportunity of proceeding with the constitution of a civil party of the the body, had unanimously agreed on the opportunity to postpone the possible bringing of civil action by the administration to a date subsequent to the holding of the preliminary hearing, “since, at the moment, there is no representation of how the conduct at issue has negatively affected the Entity”, so that “the constitution would be based on assessments relating only to the damage “to the image of the administration, also due to the media outcry”.
On the sidelines of this position, accompanied by the interlocution activity, formalized between the Administration and the Bankruptcy Receiver of the Company, which is leading to the definition of every give and take with the performing company, I highlight that the Court Supreme Court of Cassation in United Sections, n.31755 of 5 December 2019, in definitively clarifying the terms of events, such as the one under discussion, clarified that .
This ruling, together with the fact that the public prosecutor in the request for indictment did not hypothesize any damage to the Municipality of Latina which, moreover, is not among the offended parties in the proceedings, refers to another jurisdiction, namely the accounting one, the task of establishing whether the management of the subsidiary Latina Ambiente was a source of financial damage for the Municipality of Latina or not. In this regard, the Administration, following the definition of the conciliation undertaken of the respective issues with the Receivership, reserves the right to transmit to the Accounting Judges all the documents concerning the events of Latina Ambiente and the causes that led to its bankruptcy, in order to verify once and for all who is actually responsible.
And to do this there will be no need to wait for the results of the criminal trial.
But I didn’t want to stop there. To dispel any residual doubts, the Council has asked for professional advice to verify, also in light of the recent changes in the relationship between the Latina Ambiente bankruptcy trustee and the Municipality of Latina, whether or not the conditions exist to support a possible constitution of the Municipality as a civil party in the proceedings for the alleged bankruptcy of the failed subsidiary, or whether the protection of the interests of the entity and the citizens should much more appropriately take place elsewhere.
Why so much attention on my part? Simply because there are 26 people involved in the proceeding in question, people for whom the presumption of innocence applies and towards whom this administration, in line with the guarantee attitude already observed at the time by the previous administration and by the managers of the organization , does not intend to take initiatives that could prove hasty tomorrow, due to the consequences that would result.
Finally, I don’t want to ignore the fact that among those 26 people involved there are people who enjoy my full trust, for whom, as for everyone, the presumption of innocence applies, which cannot be flaunted in an alternating current.”
Thus in a note the Mayor of Latina Matilde Celentano.
