Almost exactly ten years after the “big Mose raid” which opened the prison doors to the powerful regional councilor for Infrastructure, Renato Chisso (but also to the former president of the Region, Giancarlo Galan), Chisso wins his battle and will regain, with interests and revaluation, over three hundred thousand euros of annuity confiscated in 2020, or rather, approximately four fifths of the total sum. And this paves the way for a twin appeal by Galan which, however, does not yet appear to have been presented.
First sentence of its kind in Italy
«We apply the sentences – explains the president of the regional council Roberto Ciambetti dryly – just as we paid, at the time, this money to the Single Guarantee Fund headed by the Ministry of Justice, as established by the ruling regarding Chisso in 2015. Therefore from May the annuity will be restored and we will make a request to the ministerial fund mentioned above to recover the seized money to be paid to him”.
The sentence, the first of its kind in Italy, as the lawyer Maurizio Paniz explained to the Gazzettino which followed the case of the regional councilor, arises from the August 2022 (Draghi government) modification of the seizures of allowances and annuities, sheltering four fifths, in fact. In 2014 Chisso had agreed to a sentence of two years and 22 days in prison and house arrest. The confiscation of two million euros was included in the plea agreement. In relation to that provision, six years later the soldiers of the Economic-Financial Police unit of the Financial Police of Venice carried out the confiscation of 332,287 from the former councillor. It was the amount that the regional council should have given him as an annuity and which was paid into the ministerial fund. Now that money will have to be returned to him.
The cuts against «the caste»
In the meantime, but it is a parallel trend, appeals from former parliamentarians multiplied (followed by hundreds of people from Belluno and former parliamentarian Paniz) after the cut in Roman annuities wanted by the Five Star Movement against “the caste”. «In both cases – explains Paniz – when it was established that an annuity is comparable to a pension it became clear that the cut was illegitimate. The Chisso case, in which the basis was a criminal seizure, was different again.” Hence the “uniqueness” of the victory in court. The Supreme Court repeatedly and the Constitutional Court, even accepting appeals from Paniz, in fact, have established that the annuity, both national and regional, is a pension treatment. And since a pension accrued following the payment of the portion of the contributions paid by the “worker”, the worker himself has the right to have a part of it. Regardless of seizures linked to final sentences.
