Latina Ambiente, the Mayor Matilde Celentano, in a note, makes clear the intentions of the Municipality which will not be a civil party in the preliminary hearing
In a note, the mayor of Latina Matilde Celentano dissolves the reservation on the constitution of a civil party in the preliminary hearing which, on May 9th, will resume before the Gup of the Court of Latina. Among those under investigation, as is known, there are two collaborators of the current mayor: Stefano Gori and the current legal advisor of the Mayor, the lawyer Giacomo Mignano. Well, the Municipality of Latina will not be a civil party.
The criminal proceedings involve the directors who have led the Latina Ambiente company over the years, as well as presidents and advisors of the Board of Directors, auditors and professionals. At the beginning there were 34 people under investigation, eventually they dropped to 26 because some positions were archived. They must answer for having caused the bankruptcy of Latina Ambiente Spa, with the omission of accounting and budgetary controls in the period between 2007 and 2010.
After the arrest of the investigating judge Giorgia Castriota (judge in charge of the proceedings on Latina Ambiente), which took place in April 2023, the proceedings had passed into the hands of his colleague Mario La Rosa who, however, after having postponed the hearing, is no longer in the Investigating Judge’s office, but is became a single and collegial judge at the Court of Latina. Last January 24, a new judge, Laura Morselli, as judge for the preliminary hearing, found herself in the jurisdiction of the proceeding which was struggling to move forward. Just to know, the bankruptcy trustee of Latina Ambiente, through the lawyer Preziosi, had presented its request to be a civil party, while no request had yet arrived from the Municipality of Latina. Furthermore, in recent months, with the new centre-right municipal administration, led by Mayor Matilde Celentano, a mega transaction has been completed for the debts that the Municipality of Latina has with the old Latina Ambiente.
In one of the indictments it is explained that 22 of the suspects they would have hidden “losses during the 2007-2013 management, losses estimated at no less than approximately 18 and a half million euros, through the attribution of extra TIA revenues and income compared to the PEF amounts of the same period, with consequent erosion of the share capital“. The capital loss over the years was 18.5 million euros. In another charge, the one that involves more suspects, there is the serious accusation of fraudulent bankruptcy.
Among other things, the bankruptcy trustee of Latina Ambiente, Lorenzo Palmerini, was appointed by the Celentano administration itself as President of the company of common goods (ABC), which deals with the urban hygiene service in Latina. Not to mention that Palmerini himself is also in the position of being a consultant for Rida Ambiente, the company that manages the Tmb plant in Aprilia to which the Municipality of Latina supplies the undifferentiated waste. On the one hand there is ABC which should push for separate waste collection, on the other the interests of Rida which earns on the disposal of undifferentiated waste. Another story, no less thorny. Returning to Latina Ambiente, the Municipality has decided and does so with an official declaration from the Mayor Matilde Celentano.
“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 the assessment for compensation for damage deriving from fraudulent bankruptcy due to the bankruptcy of the company investee is the responsibility of the Court of Auditors.
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.”
Read also:
LATINA AMBIENTE FAILURE: THE CURATELA CONSTITUTES A CIVIL PARTY
