BARI – «When they say that the vote is secret it is a lie, because you discover it after two seconds through your method. And when he went to see what was there he would pay you otherwise he wouldn’t pay you.” “That” is Alessandro Cataldo, the husband of the former regional councilor Anita Maurodinoia. Armando Defrancesco, the former district councilor who ended up under house arrest together with Cataldo on 4 April on charges of criminal association aimed at electoral corruption, explains the method with which Sandrino bought votes.
In this conversation, recorded on 22 January 2021 by Finance Marshal Gerardo Leone, Defrancesco is heard describing how – in his opinion – the system worked: «Every time we did the electoral campaign, we did… let’s say, we bought the votes, I’ll also tell you the system we did, he’s a genius, we have to recognize him on this, he had an infernal system that no one in the world knows about in my opinion. He knew how to tell you whether you voted for him or not through this technique. So he used me because I had many friends among the young people, we paid 50 euros per vote.”
Defrancesco’s story is the basis of the investigations by the Bari Prosecutor’s Office which led to the arrest of Cataldo and the resignation of Maurodinoia and the mayor of Triggiano, Antonio Donatelli. For Sandrino’s defense, however, the story would also be tainted by a plot orchestrated by Leone against Cataldo: the financier was arrested after Cataldo’s complaint, who recorded him and accused him of having asked him for money to cover up the investigation into the rigged contracts in the Province of Bari.
