Mayor Matilde Celentano tries to bring order to the Latina Ambiente case, the constitution of the Municipality as a civil party and the minority’s doubts about the management of the legal sector. You do so with a long note in which you respond to the criticisms of the centre-left and make it clear how the municipal administration is moving to avoid making hasty or unconsidered decisions. But the feeling is that there will not be a civil party constitution. Here because.
«On the Latina Ambiente issue, on the political implications that were wanted to be given to the case and on the new developments 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 constitution of the Municipality of Latina as a civil party in the trial in which 26 people are accused” states Matilde Celentano, who immediately afterwards underlines her convinced guaranteeism, in continuity, she says, “with that of those who preceded me”. And here you bring out the first “ace”, i.e. a document from the Coletta administration in which essentially any decision regarding the formation of civil parties is postponed until the day after a preliminary hearing which transforms the suspects into defendants. «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 Borgo Piave EPP variant procedure, at the following an informal meeting of the Council, it 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”. Then Celentano cites a second document, signed by some of the organisation’s managers: Quirino Volpe, Diego Vicaro, Paolo Cestra and Egidio Santamaria. The document is dated February 24, 2023, refers to the trial on the bankruptcy of Latina Ambiente and states: «The undersigned (…) agree to postpone the possible incorporation of the administration as a civil party after the preliminary hearing has been held». Starting from this, Mayor Celentano adds: « the position taken by a group of managers from the Municipality of Latina who were invited by the Municipal Attorney’s Office on 23 February 2023 to express an opinion on the opportunity to proceed with the constitution of the entity as a civil party, had unanimously agreed on the opportunity to postpone the possible constitution of the administration as a civil party to a date subsequent to the holding of the preliminary hearing, “since, at the moment, there is no representation of how the conduct which is the subject of the accusation have had a negative impact on the organisation”, so much 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”.
Celentano then enters for a moment into the merits of the issue linked to the ongoing discussions with the bankruptcy trustee of Latina Ambiente to establish the “give and take”. « the 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 for the bankruptcy of the investee company falls under the jurisdiction 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”, underlines the mayor.
To close, Mayor Celentano announces that he has requested a further opinion on the conditions for establishing a civil party. «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 – concludes Matilde Celentano – 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 alternating current” .
